


Recruitment Drive

by Ihsan997



Series: The Self-Doubting Color-Neutral Side of the Force [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Betrayal, Break Up, Denial of Feelings, Ethical Dilemmas, Family Issues, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Partner Betrayal, Philosophy, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shock, Slavery, The Dark Side of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-03-06 04:49:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13403805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihsan997/pseuds/Ihsan997
Summary: A Sith juggernaut finally earns a ship he doesn’t know how to fly to run missions he isn’t quite prepared for. He scours Imperial Space to staff his ship with the best crew members he can find, or those who are simply available and can fog up a mirror. Whichever comes first.





	1. Hello to Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> A series of drabble and oneshots to develop the personalities of original companion characters. It doesn’t seem possible that every member of a class has followers with the same exact names.
> 
> Story takes place starting from 3643 BBY.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Sith juggernaut earns a hollow victory and an abrupt heartache. Sometimes you can screw yourself by just being yourself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place in 3643 BBY. I created original crew members for the fic because it doesn’t make sense if every OC has the same exact supporting characters as every other OC.

Metal footsteps tapped on the metal floor of the neglected minor starport, announcing the arrival of the cloaked figure to the janitorial droids on the night shift. In that remote part of Korriban, and especially at that time of day, there were few available to witness the flight of the lone Sith lord hurrying to the nearly empty hangar with an astromech droid over his shoulder, which was exactly what he preferred. Nobody saw him arrive, nobody would see him leave, and nobody would know what had taken place moments prior. The smoldering streaks on his armor spoke of the fight which had sent him in such a hurried escape, though his elated mood clarified how little he cared for the damage to his gear.

Wordlessly, he leapt over the barrier in the queue area of the isolated starport, leaving the lone clerk on the night shift to continue sleeping at her desk and the poorly maintained android attendants to ignore the swift dark blur that whizzed by them. He was too close to his victory to stop for anybody other than his meager crew. His crew. That’s all that mattered.

Orcina and Trevjan, the humans forming his two-person crew, sat in the waiting area, jittery from caffeine and anxiety at their master’s tardiness. They both chattered amongst themselves as they rose to their feet and fiddled with their luggage, completely unprepared for the barrage they’d have to absorb.

“Hurry! Hurry! We have clearance to leave, there’s no time to waste!” the Sith pureblood spoke quickly through his mask. “Come on, the ship is leaving!”

“Lord Xuvas, please, if you kick my bags then the warranty could be voided!” Trevjan exclaimed while trying to grab his luggage. Unfortunately for him, their commander was too focused on their escape to listen.

“Let’s go, we only have limited time!”

Orcina could tell that something was awry when the Sith lord used the Force to break the lock on the door leading to the hangar itself. “But Lord Renning’s ship is the only one here, and the hangar door is already open. Are we really at risk of being late?”

The astromech droid which Xuvas was carrying beeped in protest, especially when the latter decided that Orcina was walking too slowly and lifted her luggage over his other shoulder. “Yes, I’m sure, now keep moving! There are special conditions that require us to leave right now!”

“Is everything alright, Lord Xuvas?” Trevjan asked while struggling to keep up.

“Yes, everything is entirely fine and without problems,” the pureblood replied over more indignant beeping from the astromech.

“Are you sure Lord Renning approves of you taking his ship?” Orcina asked.

“Let’s say that his consent was given in a certain form, now open the hatch!” Orcina did as she was told, watching the two men approach across the poorly lit hangar opening to the night sky. “Where is Malora?”

“We thought she was with you,” Trevjan huffed while dragging the last of his bags to the hatch of the Fury-class interceptor that was now the property of Xuvas. “My Lord, what’s going on? Is there something urgent on the Imperial Fleet?”

“Yeah, sort of, we need to lay low for a while since I stole this droid and had it hack the planetary transportation register to switch the ship to my name after I killed Renning.”

“WHAT!!” both of the humans screamed along to the astromech droid’s continued beeping.

“He was a nutjob who deserved it, now get in there and call Malora in the holocron!”

Xuvas threw all of Trevjan’s luggage up the ramp and straight into the ship’s loading bay, nearly panicking as he raced to skip town, the planet, and the whole star system.

“No, we’re fugitives!” Orcina wailed, burying her face in her hands.

Xuvas lifted the heavy metal droid over his head and threw the entire thing into the ship.

“Calm down, I also had the droid register the ship and our ID numbers as having left the planet yesterday, it’s the perfect alibi, now move!”

The ship’s on-board service droid attempted to greet them at the on ramp, but it was knocked right back into the ship after Xuvas threw Orcina’s luggage inside.

“Master Xuvas, it’s so good to acknowledge your transfer of owner - ow my chassis!”

“Move, move! Go call Malora, we need to leave!”

Xuvas lifted Trevjan over his head like he’d done with the poor guy’s luggage and threw him into the ship too.

“Lord Xuvas waaaaaiiitt!”

“Hustle, hustle!”

Xuvas reached for Orcina, who promptly began to panic and throw her arms over her curly frohawk defensively. He did have the decency to toss her a little more gently than he’d done to Trevjan.

“The hair, watch the hair!”

Xuvas took off his travel backpack and threw that into the ship, hitting someone in the face with it in his rush to cover his tracks.

With his droids, provisions, extra pairs of socks, and crew members all loaded, he paced back toward the waiting area and confirmed that they hadn’t been seen. His heart raced in his chest, both from the excitement of successfully executing a plot three months in the making as well as the anxious rush of wondering where his partner in crime was. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Hadru.”

Goosebumps spread across his skin at the sound of his personal name being used. Spinning around, he felt warmth flow over the surface of his skin at the sight of the speaker. Dark, hooded doe-eyes watched him from beneath the hood as she leaned against the hangar staff’s maintenance gear, watching him as he strode over to her.

“Malora, my sweet...were you here the whole time?”

She held out her hand daintily and allowed her to clasp it in his. “I promised that I’d always be watching,” she replied in a sultry voice.

“When you didn’t make it to the ambush point, I was so worried. I’ve been worried every step of the way until this moment.”

Those brown eyes glimmered with the faintest hint of red as the dark side of the Force flared in her, and he wished they’d been able to hijack a larger ship with more privacy from the crew.

“So its done, then? Tell me, Hadru, did he suffer?”

“I watched him pass on as my saber pierced his heart. He did some damage on the way down, but nothing could stop me from realizing our plan.”

Malora pouted and stroked the burn marks on his armor with her fingertips. “I’m so sorry that I wasn’t able to help as planned, but I knew you could do it...” Her pout formed into a smile, her passion always pushing her to change at such a thrilling pace. “Come, I’ll tell you all about what happened once we’re in our new ship.”

Joy filled the hole left in his heart after the rage he’d felt at his former master had been exorcised in a duel atop a cliff. He didn’t want to wait a second longer before triumphantly taking Malora by the hand and walking her on to the interceptor he’d coveted for so long.

Except she wasn’t holding his hand; she’d fallen behind.

“Come, my dear, we don’t have a moment to-“

A slight tickle touched the back of his head as he heard the energy pulse of a blaster pistol. The tickle brushed the back of his head again, and he realized that his cowl was on fire. He quickly slapped it out and turned, vowing to kill any late-night starport staff members who had just signed their own death warrants.

Malora was standing in front of him, her eyes widened and her jaw agape. And a blaster in her hand.

Scenarios in which firing a blaster near his head as a joke, or finding a stray blaster and accidentally firing it, all flashed through his head. Every possibility that could explain away what had just occurred floated through his befuddled mind, and those few seconds stretched into hours. The two of them stared at each other in shock, and Xuvas fought a mental battle against the Force as he tried to convince himself that Malora had picked up a stray pistol out of curiosity and triggered it mistakenly.

He stared into those pretty brown eyes, imagining the first time she’d looked at him and batted her eyelashes. His hand twitched, but he couldn’t move, and the way she kept staring at him nervously pushed him toward delerium. He wavered, nearly falling light-headed, and the way she stiffened her arm when he did so caused a voice to scream in his head against the warm images of her in his arms that he tried to focus on.

At first, he couldn’t speak, and only a small amount of air escaped his mouth. Every explanation he tried to invent in his mind to justify her act fell flat, and the truth refused to let him pretend that she’d merely been testing his skills. And when he found himself unable to lie to himself, he felt as if her fingers had begun pulling on a long, agonizingly slow tear in the tissue of his heart.

“A blaster pistol?” was all he could utter at first.

A big, painful lump pushed up into his chest, pressing on his lungs and ribs as if his body was going into a catatonic state. Yet she wasn’t exercising her power on him; he was simply starting to break upon realization that the love of his life had just shot him.

All that love melted off of her face, leaving the deep creases of a frown as he felt a barrier he’d never even know about slam down in his face. “Well, you’d have noticed if I’d tried with my lightsaber,” she replied coldly. “But I forgot that you’re good for at least one thing...taking punishment.”

She hurt him. A lot.

“Malora...”

“I’ve waited too long, and failed too many times to take Renning out myself. You’re the perfect scapegoat, the stereotype of an ambitious overachiever nobody even likes.”

“Three months...I told you everything...you were supposed to meet my parents-“

“You’re the type of naive kid who would believe that,” she replied in a flat voice again, doing her best to belittle him and shatter his will. “At least I can just go ahead and use my lightsaber now-“

WHAM

She’d been so focused on breaking his heart that she hadn’t noticed the vending machine on the second-story observation deck he’d Force-pulled and dropped on her. Chocolate bars and unhealthy cheese snacks scattered across the floor, punctuating the odd twitching of her limbs sticking out from beneath the machine. A fizzy drink burst and sprayed on the floor, mixing with her blood.

Tears began to fall behind his mask, and he shook his head in rejection of what had just happened. Three months had been ended in a few excruciating seconds, and his throat constricted as the full reality began to press down on him. He knelt down and held her hand one last time, cursing himself for his weakness and inability to see a betrayal for what it truly was. Her twitching hand should have disgusted him after what she’d done, but all he could think of was how desperately he wished it had all been a bad dream, and that he could reverse it all, or that he could even bring her back and forgive her.

Stirring inside of the ship pushed him to repress the pain and hide himself from his crew. He Force-lifted his nightsaber from his belt and placed it in her hand, ensuring that her fingerprints would be on the murder weapon. He could find a way to get a new nightsaber in one of the fleet ships; it was only a material possession.

His inner fire doused with cold water, he dragged his feet up the ramp to the ship, confident that her corpse with the murder weapon would be found in the morning, two days after his ‘official’ exit date from the planet.

He still forced his head up high, bullying himself into putting up a confident front as he commanded his brand new ship to another military assignment he’d rigged. He’d been betrayed so many times in his few years on Korriban, even by other lovers; he just wanted to forget those years of his life. Despite his faith in the traditions of that holy planet, all he could think of was leaving into hyperspace and locking himself in his quarters with a boring nature documentary on and the volume up as he cried himself to sleep.


	2. Intergalactic Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Semi-fluff chapter of original companion characters speculating about their commander’s bad luck on Korriban.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Though not all chapters in this series will necessarily follow one another, this one does follow immediately after the previous one.

Orcina double checked all the ship’s systems one more time as she waited for her orders. She could hear their commander enter the ship through the hall and was wondering what had taken him so long to board considering how much he’d rushed them.

She looked over to Trevjan. “We have our course plotted?”

He was quite focused on the ship’s navigational interface, and she almost asked him a second time. “No, this is the first time the software has ever been used...why would Darth Renning have such an expensive ship and never actually use it?”

“Well...I guess it will be used now,” Orcina replied, and she shuddered thereafter. “I just want to go. Seriously, I trust Lord Xuvas, but I’m not sure of this plan. I don’t even know what I’m going to do when we see the first customs officer on the fleet...”

“I’m just trying to pretend that it didn’t happen. Really, we’re about to cover a considerable distance...I just want to pretend that none of this happened until we can get into hyperspace.”

Metal clomping signaled the arrival of the ship’s service android, and both of the humans turned around.

“Are they here?” Orcina asked.

The 2V-R8 model of service android rubbed its hands nervously. “Yes, well, no. Master Xuvas is here,” it replied in a voice more emotive than that of most sentients.

The two humans looked at each other for a moment and wondered what the plan was. “And Malora?” Trevjan asked hesitantly.

“Lord Xuvas said she has a headache and couldn’t make it,” the service droid replied. “He also says that we’re going back to Dromund Kaas before the Imperial Fleet.”

Trevjan began fiddling with the navigations system again. “Oh, wow, good thing I didn’t finish the system setup yet. I’d have had to program coordinates twice.”

Orcina looked at Trevjan and back at the droid. “So wait, Malora is still here on the planet? She’s not coming with us?”

“No, Master Xuvas was quite insistent that we leave immediately. I fear repercussions if we delay further.”

“Yes, but won’t Malora face repercussions if she stays here after they assassinated her mentor?” Orcina asked. “Maybe I should go check to see - I mean, is this really the best course of action? It all feels so rushed.”

2V-R8 shook its head firmly. “I must highly advise against that, Miss Raeth. He sealed his chamber door and is listening to depressing music and watching reruns of nature documentaries.”

Orcina‘s eyes widened even as she prepared the engines for launch. Although she had to consider the pieces of the puzzle for a few seconds, the full picture was clear.

“Awww, Lord Xuvas has a breakup. Trevjan, you should go talk to him.”

“NO. Big giant no. With whipped cream on top.”

“Come on, you should go...do guy talk or something.”

“Half my face is swollen from being hit by his bag, and he wasn’t even angry. I’m not going near him until we reach the Dromund System.”

“That takes, like, almost an hour.”

“Good, let him walk it off, he’ll be fine. And hopefully the rest of us on this ship will be, too.” Trevjan paused as he finished booting up the navigation, doing his best not to look Orcina in the eye. “Our course is mapped. Are the engine’s ready?”

“It’s still possible to be friends with one’s commanding officer,” Orcina sighed as she initiated takeoff. The stolen X2-C3 astromech beeped in protest from somewhere deeper in the ship. “Of course I’ve seen it before!”

“You first, then,” Trevjan said jokingly.

She stopped herself from protesting openly as they took off, not wanting to contradict herself. Perhaps she’d find a way for them to check on how their commander was doing once she could safely set the ship on autopilot in hyperspace, though she wasn’t going to take the risk after having been literally thrown onto the ship.


	3. Demeaning Promotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Sith meets the Star Wars equivalent of President Business from the LEGO Movie. Even a stickler for details might not appreciate micromanaging.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Immediately follows the previous chapter. The same storyline missions can’t possibly be shared by all player characters, so I’m making up original missions (and locations on Dromund Kaas) to entertain myself. I hope you’re entertained, too.

Having recovered into a steady state of rationalization and repression, Xuvas was able to hold his head high as he entered the Imperial Citadel of Kaas City. His crew had not only left him alone during the entire hyperspace jump from Korriban, but they’d also had the sense to request a few recreational hours as soon as they’d landed. In his mind, that cemented their positions as his permanent pilots; not only werethey discreet enough to keep secrets, but they were also sensible enough to leave him alone when he was in a bad mood.

And so, for the first time since he’d been in his late teens, he returned to his home world. He’d only spent a year on Ziost after graduating from the Dromund Kaas academy; it was Korriban where he’d spent his formative years. He now felt like a foreigner in his own hometown, unused to the humidity of the climate and the bright lights of the big city. He didn’t remember everything being so loud, so ostentatious, so...temporal.

His sense of awe ended inside the Imperial Citadel’s Sphere of Sith Philosophy. His official sphere of sponsorship was the sort of plain, undecorated environment he’d come to prefer after years spent on the holy planet of his ancestors’ birth. Even in the waiting room of the dark lord who’d accepted him as an acolyte, he lacked the feeling of being overwhelmed he’d held outside the building.

The double doors to the chamber of the Sith Lord of Philosophy opened into the austere waiting room, and an imperial guard approached him. “The master will see you now,” the drab guard said in a monotone voice.

“Thank you,” Xuvas replied.

Unlike the stories he’d heard of other members of the Dark Council, the councilor of philosophy maintained a comparatively small office designed in only red and black hues. A desk and a set of chairs analogous to those in a small civilian office sat in the center, free of any clutter. A man wearing robes so plain that they could belong to a first-year initiate sat at the head of the modest table.

“Sit,” the hooded councilor ordered plainly while motioning toward a chair.

“Yes, Darth Aruk.”

Prepared and ready, the highest ranking philosopher and theologian in the Empire didn’t waste time. “I’ve reviewed your files; you’ve spent a total of six years in academic training.”

“It was an honor, sir.”

“It’s too long.”

As if he’d been publicly slapped, Xuvas just sat in the chair and stared at his master stupidly for a moment. “Oh,” was all he could muster while crawling into a defensive mindset.

“You rated as the top of your class at numerous examination periods, but you spent more time taking those exams than the median time frame for our graduates. You’re too cautious.”

“Then I’ll learn to take more calculated risks, sir.”

“Did your ship come from the budget of another sphere?”

Xuvas told a bit of truth and a bit of lies. His master would know what he was doing but wouldn’t know which part to believe. “It was technically from another sphere, but administratively off the budget,” he said. “There’s no debt to be repaid.”

“Yet you checked in with only two crew members. That’s not enough for properly manned missions.”

“Well, I do have two androids-“

“One is a service model and the other an astromech. They’re slow to travel and useless in conflict. They don’t count in your favor, and your ship is considered useless if you lose either of them.”

“Then I’ll ensure that they’re preserved.”

“Have you traveled outside of the continent?”  
Aruk asked without relenting.

“I - no, I spent all my life in the city.”

“My apprentices are tracking down Revanite cultists already. You’re going on a less critical mission on the other side of this planet.”

“Oh...well, I...I’d intended to explain, today, the benefits you could reap by bringing me on as your full apprentice.”

Aruk shook his head and continued speaking without pause. “I have only two vacancies and two competitors for my apprentice positions, and they’re both more experienced than you. Until one of them dies, you’ll be in the waiting list.”

“Then...I will wait patiently and enhance my skills,” Xuvas replied as evenly as he could despite his disappointment.

“Consider this an excellent opportunity for you to prove yourself. The Revanites are an external threat; the threat within are those remote members of the Sith Order who are influenced by them. The types who love the Empire, who hate Revan, who believe themselves to be in the true path, but who’ve nominally accepted Revan’s doctrine of appeasement to the light side without realizing it.”

“Then I’ll purify our capital planet of such corruption.”

Aruk’s head moved beneath his hood as if he were pleased. “Good. Succeed, and I may promote you to our anti-Jedi awareness campaign on non-Imperial planets. That would be the surest path toward apprenticeship.”

“It will be an honor when I succeed, sir.”

“Don’t be pompous,” Aruk said to the almost equally drab warrior merely for promising success in a flat tone.

“Lesson learned.”

“And drop the exaggerated humility.”

“I...um...okay.”

Aruk continued to stare at the young pureblood for a few more judgmental seconds. “Your cape is uneven.”

“I’ll fix it.”

After a few more seconds of searching for anything else to criticize, Aruk relented and seemed to tire of their conversation. “I’ll have a strategist at the spaceport brief you on the details in one week. Until then, you have my authorization to hire a full crew for your ship on our Sphere’s behalf through the Ministry of Logistics. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t, sir.”

“Be sure that you keep up to date on your exegesis of the Dark Jedi Classics. I read the paper on comparative hermeneutical analysis which you published and felt it to be rushed.”

“Then I’ll take more time in the future.”

“Buy my three volume explanation of the ideological symptoms of unintentional light side appeasement.”

“I already read and annotated them.”

“Do it again.”

“Oh...uh...okay.”

For one last time, Aruk gave him a long, hard look. “Fix your cape.”

“Right away sir.”

“You are dismissed.”

Oh thank the Force, Xuvas thought as he escaped from his master’s office as quickly as he could.

Outside the office, he power-walked his way toward the building’s exit, wary of being called back in for last minute pointless instructions that were probably a test of his resolve in one weird way or another.

“No running,” the imperial guard said after him without really paying attention, earning himself a Force-choke for his inattentiveness.

“Know your role,” Xuvas said as he dropped the man on the floor.

For a number of years, he dreamt of finally meeting Darth Aruk again, having seen him only on his farewell ceremony prior to his flight to Ziost. Never would he have imagined that he’d be so eager to escape the office of the man he hoped to one day replace. If he ever did climb in the ranks, he’d pledge to Force-choke himself if he ever became that hyper-critical and micromanaging.


	4. Bodyguard Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An inexperienced Sith Lord, after an ethical dispute with a family member, stumbles upon an example of wasted talent he can’t turn his back on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place on Dromund Kaas shortly after graduation from the Sith Academy on Korriban.

Xuvas disembarked from the shuttle at the lower region of Kaas City’s west side. He disliked being chauffeured as much as he disliked dressing up when off duty, but the pressures of his familial background compelled him into both as much as they compelled the various guards and socialites he passed to salute him as he walked toward his destination. The pressure he felt when being his original self was overwhelming, and he’d forgotten what it felt like to be a Sutta ever since he’d first been transferred to Ziost. As soon as he had Aruk’s permission, he’d leave his hometown. On that day, he didn’t realize that he’d end up a step closer to gaining that permission following the task he’d been given.

Though Kaas City was elegant from top to bottom, the lower western reaches were the closest sector to a ‘low class’ area. The bustle of a certain type of market, one he felt ashamed to look at, kept him at bay as he waited near the street side gate. He checked his timepiece; he’d arrived with only moments to spare.

Like clockwork - no pun intended - an unmarked shuttle pulled up near the neighborhood gate and slowed down. A tired-looking twi’lek man exited first and assisted a few upper-middle class ladies exit, causing another round of salutations from the area guards. Flashes of red skin pushed Xuvas into approaching, though he politely waited for the group to all exit before he spoke.

The relatively well-dressed twi’lek recognized the pureblood waiting near the shuttle, and the overworked man’s eyes glimmered. “Oh...master Hadru...or, Xuvas, I’m sorry. It’s been a while.”

Xuvas looked at one of his family’s retainers sympathetically. “It has,” he replied, already causing a measure of alarm to his fellow purebloods in the shuttle, all of whom recognized his voice as they sauntered out. “Are you...alright?”

The pinkish twi’lek smiled, knowing that the Sith juggernaut would understand the true answer without the need for words. “Life is worth living,” the twi’lek replied. “Your sister is here-“

“He knows I’m here,” an aggressive voice said. The other pureblood ladies were either too timid in front of Xuvas, or too busy preening in front of him, to interrupt the way his sister did. “What a surprise. No, wait, it isn’t.”

Her friends huddled closer to the neighborhood gates and waited; his sister must have prepared them knowing that he’d returned to the planet the day prior. There was no welcome to one of her younger siblings, and the familiar standoffish distance existed between them - her doing, not his.

“It’s nice to see you, Siqsanjat,” he said as cordially as he could. Cordial was about all he could manage with most of his family anyway, though she didn’t seem to value how hard he was trying.

“Yes, yes, I know. Good, how are you, go ahead and lecture me, by the way, I have a few more friends you can reject before waxing poetic about being miserable and single.” Her nastiness went unheard by the other Sith nearby, as it always did, and even his hard stare didn’t wear her down the way it could to a smuggler or Republic spy. “You’re wasting your time, by the way.”

A form love for their Empire helped him to endure her slurs, and he went through the motions despite already knowing that he’d lose. He couldn’t change their entire society, but he could at least make his moral stance clear to her.

“There are alternatives,” he said while pointing toward the gates to the less-than-posh neighborhood with his chin. “Contractual employment for domestic workers is possible. The Empire has so much more to gain from subjects rather than-“

“You grew up benefitting from slaves, so spare me the sermons. You listen to Darth Malgus too much.”

Fighting the urge to verbally beat her down for her ignorance, he still tried to reason with her. “Situations can change; change is the only constant. Obstinacy is evocative of the stagnant peace preached by Jedi.”

“If you believe that what you see is wrong, then go spend your own credits and buy some alien to go easy on,” she replied as swift as a viper. “Put your money where your mouth is and stop embarrassing me in front of my friends.”

Even if anger was preached by his teachers, his passion and emotion caused him to cling to more sentimental feelings as well. And even if she was too ignorant to see, those sentiments helped him to bear treatment he knew would cause her to crumple were he to react in kind.

“Thank you for the advice. I hope that you’ll grant mine equal weight.”

She sighed dramatically. “Can I go now, teacher?” she asked while looking up at him in exasperation. He’d already pushed her to her limit; she was either stressed, or had lost her endurance for his lecturing during his absence.

He could have pushed her more, perhaps even gained a concession or two, but he was patient. He could always continue with her later...at least she even gave the family any credence at all, unlike their older brother.

“I hope to see you for dinner at the family hall tomorrow.”

Without answering, she put on her best face and turned back to her friends, flipping 180 degrees and pretending all was well. A few of her friends tried waving to him as they entered the slave market. The twi’lek man, whom his sister occasionally tasked as a male stripper at her friends’ parties, waved as well, knowing Xuvas was one of the few members of their family who sympathized with his plight. The group disappeared into the busy market, likely aiming to inflict their exhausting social life onto another retainer or two.

Xuvas waited for a few moments after they disappeared into the crowd, almost fixated by the slave market. The ‘aliens’ were mostly kept out of view of the city at large, and like many others, he was usually able to pretend that he didn’t know or remember what went on in that district. On that particular day, though, Xuvas was unable to simply walk away. Perhaps due to the measure of masochism inherent in all juggernauts, he began to walk down the street of the slave market, exposing himself to an institution he felt fundamentally wrong and counterproductive for the first time in years.

As he remembered, most of the sentient beings for sale were politically unorganized near-humans. They weren’t openly abused like the ones he’d heard about on cartel-governed planets, but the downtrodden expressions most of them wore still causes him discomfort.

It was a few streets in where his interest was aroused. A group of near-humans were at work in a development behind an aluminum partition off the street, and the sound of mineral ore being struck echoed into the busy streetside slave market. He could already sense that very few of them were Force-sensitive, and those who were only bore weak ties to it, but he felt himself pulled toward the area.

Inside, he found at least twenty slaves breaking rocks open for mining droids to scoop up. The labor was grueling, especially in the planet’s swampy climate, and every strike of a tool against a boulder reminded Xuvas of how the work could have been done more efficiently by androids, and that those slaves could have been employed as roboticists had they been properly educated. Even when putting his beliefs about the Sith Code and its final verse aside for a moment, the whole institution was simply a waste of sentient brain power.

The resident foreman and an armed guard both saluted Xuvas as he observed, and the foreman almost seemed proud to have a pureblood watching his operation. Unobstructed, Xuvas watched the unfortunate souls as they worked. An aberration among them became apparent.

In between all the winded and crestfallen captives, a single albino-looking slave outshone the others. She was a Rattataki, one of the species pledged solely to the Empire, bearing only a modest amount of tattoos. Her work ethic, however, was anything but modest. Built like a fitness instructor, she extracted ore at a far faster rate than the other slaves, all of whom kept a distance from her. The strength with which she hefted her pickaxe was impressive given her relatively medium build, and the sound it created caused a few of the other slaves to jump every time she struck another piece of ore.

What caught Xuvas’ attention even more was her anger. Although she was only slightly talented in the Force, he could still sense her presence in it, and that presence was one of thick anger all around her. Like a pretty hate machine, she struck the boulders in the labor camp as if she wished she could cause them pain. The armed guard watched her closely, but she didn’t seem to care, venting her frustration on whatever she could get away with hitting.

And she never relented. “What a waste of talent,” Xuvas murmured in awe as he found himself descending into the off-street work camp.

The slaves parted ways as he walked, cowering fearfully as a Sith pureblood stood among them possibly for the first time. The armed guard tried to speak up, but the foreman silenced the effort, likely hoping to make a sale (of a living, breathing being).

The hairless, paper-white woman didn’t look up at Xuvas like the other slaves did, her rage only growing as he drew near. The guard actually readied his rifle when she began striking the ore even harder, worried that the Sith pureblood had put himself in danger. He could have been; he was within striking distance, and he could feel the vibrations as she sped up her work. She was almost as tall as he was, and he was by no means a small man, and he could sense the anger surrounding her clinging to him.

His moral outrage temporarily forgotten, Xuvas began testing a theory. Without asking permission, he used his telekinesis to lift another boulder and float it across the labor camp. Every other slave in the area stopped their work and stared at the Force-wielder in awe, whispering among themselves as if they’d seen a ghost. The Rattataki finally stopped her work and looked up, scowling at him and ignoring the boulder even when he lowered it in front of her. She refused to act first, staring at him and likely prepared to do so all day until he spoke.

“Again,” he ordered.

Snorting skeptically, she continued staring at him as the other slaves whispered, and the foreman stepped forward curiously to watch what would happen next. The tension was tangible, and Xuvas almost felt anxious tension as he wondered how she’d react.

Gripping her pickaxe tightly, she sneered and bared her canine teeth at him like a dog. Heaving the pickaxe again, she shattered the boulder so violently that a few of the other slaves ran further away, and at least one of them let out a little yelp. Xuvas could hear the guard taking aim at the Rattataki’s head, but the foreman seemed as interested as Xuvas was.

He repeated the action, lowering another boulder at her feet. “Again,” he ordered.

Snorting like a tukata, she swung harder, staring right into his eyes and gritting her teeth irately the whole time. She didn’t mind the work; he could sense that she was acting out a fantasy. He could feel her hate, feel how much she wished she could perform the same act on his skull...and he sympathized.

He didn’t simply sense her through the Force; he could feel her. And what he felt was a person who wasn’t wrong in being so angry. He felt a person who’s distaste for the world was based on experience.

Giving his back to her to make a point that he was satisfied, Xuvas looked up at the foreman. “How much?” he asked, actually bargaining for the price of a slave despite his opposition to the practice. He had to test his theory further.

The foreman looked taken aback and stepped closer to him, waving for the rest of the slaves to get back to work as he did so. Standing right next to the Sith pureblood, the foreman spoke softly.

“I have many slaves capable of hard labor, of that’s what you want,” the greasy human said. “But Pjiega, she’s...an animal. She isn’t easily controlled.” The foreman pointed toward the ghostly woman’s electrified slave collar and triggered it, causing her to grunt and wince but not actually collapse into the fetal position like most people did when electrically shocked.

Xuvas shook his head. This wasn’t the first time his plans and their logical basis had been misunderstood; it wouldn’t be the last.

“She doesn’t need a controller,” he said while glancing back at the pretty hate machine named Pjiega. She squinted at him as if imagining his head exploding. “She needs a leader.

“So...how much?”


	5. Bodyguard unbound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A crazy, high-risk trust exercise succeeds in its own weird way. Even a hateful servant of the dark side just needs to be cultivated and pruned sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Immediately follows from the previous chapter.

Night descended on the relatively modest complexes of Kaas City’s west end, leading one upper-middle class apartment to fully light up for the first time in years. Four service droids and a Duro couple prepared for an unnamed guest they were expecting, having received a transmission an hour before. The two Duro, the only sentient beings permanently living in the apartment, had chattered about who they could be expecting, but only when their benefactor arrived would they know for sure.

Upon his arrival, all seemed well. The two sentients converged on the door, greeting him as the pureblood entered.

“Welcome home, master,” one of the two bug-eyed servants said as he walked inside.

Xuvas nodded as he walked inside and left his outer robe in the anteroom. “Fran, Jan, good evening,” he said nonchalantly as if all was normal.

Behind him stood the ghostly figure of his companion for the evening. The two Duros both hid behind Xuvas as the perennially pissed-off Pjiega walked in after him with a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. She didn’t even look at her surroundings, much less the two diminutive servants, yet they both cowered away and fidgeted at the mere sight of her. Xuvas smiled; she could scare people merely by walking in their general vicinity. If only she realized how well that worked in her favor.

As the newcomer stared blankly at the apartment as if it were a dead fly stuck in the icing of her birthday cake, the Duros tried to find any excuse to leave the room. “Master, we need to finish preparing dinner,” said Fran over her shoulder as if she was extremely busy and had to leave.

Xuvas nodded at her. “Of course.” He stopped the other one at the hallway and turned to his newest talent acquisition. “Pjiega, please wait in the second room on the right side down the hall there.” The Rattataki swiftly left without even acknowledging him, and the male Duro rotated around Xuvas to keep himself out of her direct line of vision at all times.

“Master, will she stay here forever?” Jan asked innocently.

Knowing he’d need to reassure his longtime, proven servants, he pulled the nervous Duro back toward the door. “That depends on her loyalty. That mostly leaves the decision up to her...but I do have long term plans for her.”

Jan peeked around Xuvas just to check that the newcomer had entered the room as ordered. He rubbed his hands worriedly.

“Will she live here, too?”

Xuvas tried not to laugh at the servant’s quaintness. “Not without my presence; my plans for her don’t involve domestic work,” he replied. Jan looked relieved, but was still huddling so close that it became annoying. The small man would need reassurance, especially given the test which was about to be administered.

Activating a hidden compartment in the wall, Xuvas pulled out one of several blaster pistols he secretly kept around the apartment. Although he deactivated it, the Duro didn’t know enough about combat to notice. Xuvas thrust the weapon into Jan’s hands and pulled him close.

“Hold on to it. Just in case she fails the test.”

For a few moments too many, Jan just stared down at the gun in his hands. He regarded the object as if it were entirely foreign to him, visibly cringing. Though Jan was legally a slave due to an Imperial edict against manumission, Xuvas treated him and Fran as employees; Jan’s previous owner had treated him as a true slave, however, and he wasn’t unfamiliar with violence. The blaster clearly bothered him on a deep level.

“I don’t want...” Jan stopped himself before continuing, and the inner conflict was palpable to the Sith Lord. “Okay,” Jan finally said, relenting.

Xuvas raised his chin up, leading the Duro to subconsciously imitate the movement. “You are in control,” Xuvas lied. “Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best; if this works, you won’t need to use it.”

The moment Xuvas began to move, Jan hid the blaster in the folds of his tunic as of afraid that the Rattataki would notice and charge at him. He hid one room over without needing to be told, leaving Xuvas to follow his newest acquisition into a room which could soon be hers.

She was staring at the doorway and locked eyes with him as soon as he entered. Anger radiated off of her so thickly that he could have sworn that the temperature of the room increased. For sure, his demographic represented much of what she must have loathed in the world, and there she was on his property, as far as she knew having been bought and sold to perform tasks she wouldn’t be informed of until they were already due and then blamed for their failure. No matter how intensely she glared at him and grit her teeth - and the rate of both was quite intense - he couldn’t bring himself to feel defensive at all. Especially when it was precisely her anger which he wished to harness.

He didn’t rush, but there was no reason for pleasantries. They wouldn’t be conducive to his purpose.

“Where are you from, Pjiega?”

Her nose scrunched up along its bridge, almost like a vine cat snarling but without the noise. “The place you just bought me from,” she replied tersely.

Eschewing his usual formal demeanor, he began to poke and prod. “Where were you born?” he asked after a brief pause.

“In a labor camp,” she replied quickly but tersely.

“Where is that labor camp?”

Her lips tightened as if she were flashing her teeth at him beneath. “In a ghetto in a city,” she articulated slowly from between her grinding teeth.

He began to match her attitude. Not in terms of the volume of his voice, but he did add a certain firmness to it. Just as she made apparent her rage at every aspect of his voice, movement, and mere existence, he projected the impression that he thought her answers were sincere and she was just slow.

“So you grew up in a labor camp like the one where I found you today,” he said.

She steeled her jaw, and for a few seconds he thought she might try to wait him out. That she was in his apartment while knowing nothing of what he wanted must have weighed on her, though, because that tightened jaw eventually loosened enough for air to escape and form words.

“Yeah,” was all she said in reply.

“Good, at least we’re making progress on some level.” She squinted at him again, like she’d done earlier in the day, and he knew that she was fantasizing about breaking his back with a sledgehammer. “And what do you mostly do in those labor camps?”

“Labor,” she replied in exasperation. She seemed stubborn in general, but whether from the unfamiliar environment or a passionate hatred for him, she began to react more strongly to his queries.

“How could you describe such labor in concrete terms?”

The tendons in he hands audibly flexed and loosened. “You already saw. Just hitting rocks with an axe.”

“So you can swing an object against other objects well?”

“What...you already saw.”

“Did you ever swing against another person?”

This time, her response was much slower in coming. Her lips curled into a sneer, almost as if she suspected he was trying to get her to incriminate herself. He could sense her confusion in the Force, her attempts to analyze everything he said as if it all contained multiple meanings.

Just as slowly, her sneer peeled away into just a normal displeased frown. “Yes...I buried that pickaxe in the skull of a few stuck-up bourgeoisie,” she replied with a real but exaggerated relish. She was trying to test him back and see if she could turn the tables.

It wouldn’t work. “So you like to end the lives of people who think highly of themselves?” he asked.

Her eyes widened with an arousal she tried to conceal by squinting a few seconds later; she as curious but distrusting, intrigued but hateful all at the same time. “Yes...I love the feeling of wiping the stain of arrogant, pompous nobles who feel themselves important,” she nearly hissed. Just like when she’d smashed boulders inches away while staring right at him, she was issuing a threat again. Her rage was always present, but had temporarily found a target in him...just like he’d hoped.

“But instead, you’re breaking rocks.”

Her angry frown lost all of its sincerity in a split second. She tried to maintain the front, forcing her anger to the surface, but he’d already seen the wind knocked out of her. Her species were a warrior culture, a people built around a cycle of fighting wars or fighting war games. And there he was, rubbing the reality of her situation in her face.

The strategy was working, and he could actually count the seconds as she stood silently in an attempt to find a coherent reply. She was taken aback, reminded of her situation by a person she’d felt brave enough to tacitly threaten a few seconds prior.

“Yeah,” was her only response.

Xuvas didn’t relent. “And cleanup duties? Do you cook, clean?” he asked, refusing to drop the topic of her demeaning work. When she refused to answer, he continued to push. “Most slaves are put to work doing the nastiest cleanup jobs in small crevices and spaces, so you must be assigned some fairly awful tasks.”

The chinks in her armor of anger began to appear. Proving the foreman’s impression of her true, she actually talked back to a Sith pureblood who held the trigger for her electrified collar. “Back off,” she warned him as if she had the means to act on threats.

Xuvas was on perilous territory. He needed to stoke her anger without permanently shifting its focus toward him; every word he said had to be measured as a part of the test, which he realized was for him as much as for her. He’d either win it all or lose it all with her.

“So you come from a proud species of fighters, and your owners tasked you with breaking rocks and scrubbing toilets? Was that your only existence?”

She balled up her fists, and judging by the look on her face, he guessed that she really didn’t care about being shocked anymore; her dignity was valuable to her. “Shut your presumptuous, infected mouth, you rat bastard,” she growled at him in a voice which was nearly a whisper.

“So up until now, your main goal in life was brushing porcelain and tiles until your back gave out in old age and you were sold to an organ harvester on Nar Shaddaa?”

“Oh, you nasty ass son of a bitch-“

“It must feel awful to know you can’t control your own destiny,” he said, and sincerely meant it. “To know that what you desire is what you’re best at, but to be forced into work which only constitutes an insult.”

His sincerity didn’t sate her rage, and he could see the defensive look in her eyes, the way a cornered animal looked. “Listen asshole, I don’t care what you do to me, but I swear if you don’t stop-“

“That you’ll continue to insult me, because it’s all you can do. It’s all they allowed you to do. It was the only freedom you had since you’d been robbed of your strength.”

“FUCK. YOU.”

“But you can take your strength back now.”

Snorting like an enraged Wampa, she stared him down, trying to pierce into his mind with her gaze but failing to decipher his words. Her hate was like a storm, fueled by both her sense of dignity and a deep pain at years worth of degradation. She was a wounded predator, the source of her hate for the world exposed in front of a person she knew only as an oppressor. The wound was raw, and the experience of a person like her could only teach her that it would put her at risk if exposed.

He’d tapped into that rage. Now, he needed to show her that she could fight back - and not against him.

“Peace is a lie, there is only passion,” he said while reaching for his belt pouch, her eyes following his hand the entire time.

“Though passion, we gain strength.”

He pulled out the device which, among other functions, was the trigger for her electrified slave collar. Her eyes darted between it and his eyes, and he could see the truth. In addition to the anger he’d seen earlier that day, he saw anxiety. She certainly wasn’t afraid of the pain; she was almost as tough as he was, and without all the years of training. No, not fear; through her presence in the Force, he could sense the anxiety of a strong individual rendered feeble by chains, robbed of their essence as a person and robbed of control over their own fate. She’d hidden that anxiety at the slave labor camp, but he could see it now.

“Through strength, we gain power.”

He stepped forward, hovering right in front of her. She didn’t back away, but the fury in her eyes dropped in temperature and changed from a rumbling volcano to that of a slow simmer over time.

“Though power, we gain victory.”

She scowled, preparing to be shocked for her foul mouth and recalcitrant attitude. Mere minutes into the home of her new owner, she was already expecting to be taught a lesson by her chains. She actually did look ready; just irately rejecting.

“Through victory...our chains are broken.”

For a split second, she winced as if expecting the shock to come. He pressed his thumb into a button, leading to a metallic clink as the collar responded. The electrified restraint flickered as it snapped open, releasing the primary bolt as her neck was exposed to the open air for what could have been the first time in years. The collar hit the ground hard, but even the loud noise it caused failed to spur any movement from her. She was paralyzed, but by a very different kind of shock.

In a single movement, he crushed the metal trigger in his hand, smashing the device to bits and dropping it on the floor. She stared at him, and although her visage couldn’t possibly soften - there was nothing soft about her - it became less hardened than usual.

“The Force shall set you free.”

Giving her his back and leaving her to make weird snorting noises as she struggled to comprehend what had just happened, he opened a storage locker in the modest bedroom. He pulled out a special issue melee weapon he’d obtained from the Ministry of Defense long ago, holding it out to her in both hands.

She looked up at him, her mouth hanging open and brow furrowed as if she half expected for him to continue tormenting her with her situation but in a new, more creatively insulting way.

“This is a rare Imperial vibro axe,” he explained clinically while she started to breathe heavily. “Less than a hundred were ever manufactured. The shaft is nearly indestructible, and the blade can disrupt a Jedi lightsaber.”

Her confusion rose again as she ostensibly wondered why he was showing her the weapon. To her, this probably still seemed like a dream, and only when he held the axe even closer to her did she seem to understand. With trembling fingers, she took the weapon from him, inspecting the unparalleled Imperial construction and design in awe.

“I’ve been tasked by the government to root out traitors and sympathizers, and to spread the message of the Empire and to sunder the efforts of the Republic. But you...”

She stared at him when he spoke of her, though she appeared so light headed that he wasn’t sure if she was looking at him or through him. “...you must understand what it means to be free.”

He held out his open palms, showing that he was unarmed. For sure, the thought of acting out her previous fantasies must have crossed her mind. He’d have been lying if he’d claimed that his heart rate hadn’t increased just a little bit.

“You must choose what you do next. No one else can do that for you.”

Like a computer blue screen, her face was a mess of figurative error messages. Her mouth kept forming a number of unpronounced w-words, opening and closing as she was struck totally speechless. She even took a step back from him, as if trying to discover the angle from which he’d attack her as the rest of the world she knew had likely done; when no such attack came, she actually gasped like a fish out of water a few times, unable for form words. Her hate never disappeared, her expression always remained slightly angry, but he felt as if that hate she directed at the whole universe formed an unscathed empty pocket around him.

Her guard dropped for the first time since he’d seen her (maybe for the first time in her life), she lowered herself in front of him. Confused and then surprised, he stopped her before she actually knelt down in front of him as if being knighted.

“I’m not a member of the Dark Council; you don’t need to go that far.”

Nodding in slight embarrassment, she stood up and clutched the axe to her chest like a child cradling a new toy. Perhaps the fantasies she’d had about killing him were replaying in her head and making her feel foolish, though he didn’t think she should. Regardless, he let her resolve her embarrassment and shock internally.

“W...whatever you tell me to do...wherever you tell me to go...whoever you tell me to *kill*...it’s already done. I’m your dog.”

“Your neither a dog nor a slave,” Xuvas said, finally returning to his usual formal self. “You’re a retainer to a Sith Lord...if you so choose-“

“I’ll bathe this gift in the blood of your enemies,” she whispered in a raspy voice, obviously still awestruck by gaining her freedom from a stranger.

“Glad to hear-“

“I’ll hunt the Jedi to extinction if you demand it.”

“Excellent, that’s-“

“Hail the Emperor!”

His lingering suspicion that she might have chosen otherwise laid to rest, he smiled and led her further into the room. In an attempt to save her from any more awkward feelings, he changed the subject to that of her new employment.

“These will be your quarters, close to the anteroom; whenever I’m staying here, you have the authority to screen anyone visiting - including my family members, who own the rest of the apartments in the next few floors above and below.”

She still appeared a little overwhelmed. “You mean...all of this?” she asked while sweeping her hand across the room which would be considered modest by normal standards.

“Yes, of course. I won’t be here often, which means you won’t either, but you’ll need separate quarters whenever we do return to the capital. Psychological comfort and wellbeing is critical for optimal performance on any job.”

Still overwhelmed, she began inspecting every inch of the room whereas she couldn’t have cared less about her surroundings when they’d first entered. The simple furnishings were likely things she’d never seen before, except maybe on public advertisements if she’d ever been assigned to labor in the city proper, and was wholly enraptured.

Granting her time to collect herself and wrap her head around her new situation, he took his leave. “This button opens and closes the door; the bathroom is down the hall, and it’s the job of the androids to clean it.” Her attention was temporarily broken from the foreign objects she might not know were called drapes at the last comment. “Fran and Jan will likely bring you dinner within the hour. I’ll be prepared to leave for further duties tomorrow just after sunrise, so be ready.”

Gripping the axe tightly even though they were indoors, she stiffened as if ready to fight someone right at that moment. “I’ll be ready!” Pjiega replied in her normal harsh voice, appearing as herself again.

He nodded one last time before leaving. “Good. Rest up and be ready.”

Once he was gone, she returned to feeling her way around the room as if standard amenities were a bizarre dream to her. In the hall on the first floor, Xuvas found Jan hiding behind a corner, though obviously relieved once the shouting had stopped.

The little Duro handed back the blaster pistol. “Master, the pistol was deactivated - it can’t even shoot!” he whispered.

Xuvas smirked. “How do you know that, Jan?” he asked rhetorically.

Bashful but not ashamed, Jan looked down at his own shoes. “I got scared,” he mumbled.

Patting him on the back, Xuvas moved toward the stairs to retire to his own quarters. “She passed the test; you have nothing to worry about.” He pauses on his way up to the second floor. “I learned the basic idea from you and Fran, by the way.”

The small man who was technically a slave but living free glanced at the pureblood in confusion, not comprehending the comment at all. “True loyalty can’t be coerced; it must be freely given,” he said in explanation. Jan appeared humbled by the comment and didn’t reply, only smiling shyly. “I’m going to sleep early; make sure that Pjiega is given some space, and have my armor ready by the morning. I still have more work to do.”


	6. Nepotism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Action and adventure are the best parts of Star Wars...but for every hour of awesome lightsaber combat, there are many more hours of paperwork, meetings, and negotiations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still early after the initial arrival on Dromund Kaas.

Two birds with one stone was a good deal any way he looks at it.

Applying the pressure of silence to his two interviewees the same way his master always did to him, Xuvas took his time looking over the holofiles detailing the two imperial cadets’ qualifications as sensor operators. The naturally dull, lifeless nature of the recruitment center at the Imperial Citadel added to the sense of mystique he was building; at such an early stage after receiving his title from Darth Aruk, he could still use the assistance of atmosphere to construct said mystique.

At least the pair, who’d graduated together, were doing their best to maintain their composure. Although he could sense the anxiety in them, their expressions were pleasant and attentive. A Chiss woman and a Human man, both recently graduated from the mission specialist program, nervously tapped their shoes on the ground as they felt what they thought was the wordless judgment of the pureblood. In actuality, he’d already decided to hire them both prior to the meeting itself, but he simply wanted to ensure their understanding that he’d need people who could handle pressure.

After a few minutes that he made feel like hours for the two recent graduates, Xuvas snorted behind his mask and nodded. He could see the way their own proverbial masks were peeled off when their eyes widened ever so slightly in reaction, and he knew that he’d discovered two crew members whose loyalty could be cultivated as long as he remained distant and humorless around them.

“Well, I suppose that we can spare two of our requisition slots for the time being,” he said softly, intentionally slowing down his speech and forcing them to hang on his every word. “You’re both inexperienced save your internships, but we’d be willing to grant you both the opportunity to demonstrate your skills on our next mission.”

He could feel them both beaming inside, though they both seemed to think that they could contain themselves. As if afraid to speak, they looked at each other hoping that the other would respond first. When Xuvas continued facing them motionlessly, the Chiss cleared her throat.

“We, um, we’re honored by your acceptance, Lord-“

She was cut off by the opening of the hatch behind them, and the two cadets paused anxiously when Xuvas tightened one of his gloved hands into a fist. The nervous scheduler at the recruitment center hesitated, stepping forward only when Xuvas shifted in his chair in irritation.

“M-my lord, you’ve received a transmission on our local holoterminal-“

“What does the Emperor want?” Xuvas asked impatiently. The two cadets let out muffled gasps, entirely unaware that his comment was merely hyperbole to make a point.

Not wanting to be strangled, the scheduler froze and stared straight ahead at the wall. “It’s not the Emperor, sir-“

“Then why are you here?”

The young man began to sweat. “My lord, it’s Lady Siqsanjat. She claims it’s urgent,” the scheduler stammered.

His sister. He frowned beneath his mask and wondered why he hadn’t expected her to cause him trouble. He’d only been back on the planet for a week, and she was already finding ways to give him a headache. Her timing was as impeccable as his: he had only just started to make his impression on people he’d need to direct on his ship, and strong impressions was his main form of compensation for being brand new in his position within the Sphere. He had to find a way to spin the interruption, though, because the last thing he wanted to risk was his sister actually showing up and causing him real embarrassment with her complete lack of tact.

Xuvas turned back to the cadets. “This is serious Imperial business. Wait at this table until I can grant clearance on ths problem.”

“Yes sir,” both of the cadets he was interviewing replied.

Outside of the secure interview room, Xuvas walked into a separate area used for general transmissions to the building. When he stopped, the scheduler nearly had a heart attack at the abrupt movement.

“Go wait outside,” he ordered the young man.

He didn’t need to say it twice. “Yes my lord!” the scheduler replied while scurrying into an adjacent hallway.

Once he opened the line of communication, he found his sister waiting impatiently and wearing a ridiculous headpiece covered in plumage that was eerily close to the coloration of an exotic pet of his which had gone missing years ago.

“What?” he asked her harshly as soon as the link was open.

Immune to any sort of hostility, she spoke casually as if she’d only contacted him at that moment by chance. “Brother dear, we missed you at dinner last night, you look like such a big boy with your cape, good work on busting some nobodies on the other side of the planet, yadda yadda yadda.”

“Goodbye, Siqsanjat.”

“I can help you satisfy your Sith hiring quota.”

Xuvas paused with his finger above the button to end the transmission. More out of anger than sincere interest, he began to wonder how much she knew about imperial hiring policies as well as how closely she’d been spying on him.

“Did you eavesdrop on my calls again?”

“Oh get over it. I know your ship is understaffed, and I also know that you reassigned its floor plan to add extra bunks. You’ve hit a crew requisition limit whereby you must employ another with blood as pure as ours per the promotion policy or your ship will be grounded.”

“So you’ve read my Sphere’s HR manual. Good for you, sis. And good riddance.”

“You don’t mingle with our kind enough to actually know anybody willing to join you,” Siqsanjat taunted just as his finger was hovering over the button to end the call.

He growled at her, vowing to embarrass her in front of her peers at another date. “So you want me to satisfy the quote by hiring one of your loser friends?” he asked indignantly.

His sister straightened up, having grown far too comfortable too early in their conversation. “Hyala is a qualified healer and alchemist-“

“And an insufferable shrew like you,” he interjected.

She flinched angrily but otherwise tried to hide the fact that he could still get under her skin. “She’s a qualified healer and alchemist, and Ujoxia is a qualified communications specialist.”

“Ujoxia is barely even Force sensitive. She’s useless.”

“Just because you’re too ignorant to recognize talent doesn’t give you the right to speak about someone with far more class than you!”

“Look at who’s irritated.”

“Take them on board and your quota is satisfied, and I can garner favors for our family from both of theirs. How is this not getting through that thick head of yours?”

“I only need one other pureblood. I’ll take Hyala on the condition that she’s fired upon the first repeat of any more diva behavior, even if my ship ends up grounded.”

Siqsanjat scowled at him and paused as if actually considering his offer. “Take them both and don’t ever mention Ujoxia’s late development or I’ll be sure that Hyala won’t join you. And good luck finding any other self-respecting Sith who’ll tolerate your rubbish about emancipation.”

The two of them stared each other down for a few moments, but Xuvas felt himself losing. Even for a juggernaut trained to absorb any difficulty thrown his way, his mind was still torn to the two qualified interviewees waiting for him. He couldn’t leave for too long without the mystique wearing off.

“Tell them that they have to handle the employment transfer process themselves. And they’re sleeping in bunks with the others because nobody gets private quarters of me.”

His sister flashed the same unpleasant smile she always did when tattletaling on him. “Splendid! Now I’ll be owed favors by them and you,” she taunted.

“I’m hanging out with your ex at the cantina tonight.”

“YOU SLIMY-“

Her rage immediately scorched without escalation, but he cut off the transmission thereafter. He loathed anyone who’d sink to the level of associating with either of his siblings, but in a way, he’d won a small victory: if there were two of them, they’d likely isolate themselves from him and spend all their time gossiping in private to avoid doing real work.

Back inside the interviewing room, he took his seat across from the two cadets again. Their eyes lit up at the sight of him returning from what they probably believed was a significant call, and the Human almost asked a question before the Chiss waved a finger to silence the guy. They both looked across the table at the Sith lord in suspense.

“Your patience is appreciated, and it will be necessary if the two of you intend to join the sort of missions which the Sphere of Sith Philosophy undertakes. Quite often, those who walk our path live out of our ships; the task of spreading the truth of the Empire’s message requires devotion without normal timetables.”

The Human, slightly more impetuous than his counterpart, nearly gasped again. “Does that mean we’re on board?” he asked, sinking in his chair soon after when he realized that he’d spoken out of tone per imperial protocol. “I mean...in your wisdom, do you see potential in our skills...I mean, in...us?” The Chiss waved at him to stop talking, thinking that Xuvas wouldn’t notice the slight movement.

Glad that he’d made the strong impression he’d wanted to, the pureblood paused for effect as he prepared to pretend as if he hadn’t already decided to accept their transfer under his command. Just then, however, the nervous scheduler entered the room again.

“My lord...your forgiveness, Lord Xuvas...”

“Out with it,” he replied swiftly, causing all three of the uniformed privates to shudder at his tone.

The scheduler rubbed his hands. “There’s another transmission. This time it’s from your-“

“Enough,” Xuvas interjected, cutting off the unwitting youth from revealing too much information which needed to be private. Xuvas already knew who it was. “The Empire’s work never ends...as you may soon discover,” he told the two anxious cadets cryptically as he exited the room again. And again, the scheduler scurried away to avoid bringing any more wrath onto himself.

At the recruitment center’s holoterminal, Xuvas was again disappointed but not surprised. For the first time in years, his brother was actually calling him.

The older pureblood regarded the younger with unfocused attention. “Greetings, Hadru,” his brother said without true concern. “Siqsanjat tells me that you’ve just arrived on the planet.”

“I’ve been here almost two weeks,” Xuvas replied in annoyance.

Completely oblivious, his brother continued going through the motions of a conversation neither of them wanted. “When was the last time I saw you...you were fourteen, yes?”

“Sixteen.”

“Have you earned a rank yet?”

Frustrated by the interruptions to what he’d expected to be a smooth morning, Xuvas finally began to reveal his displeasure. “Listen. I’m a little caught up at the moment-“

“I understand. I’ll call the next time you’re on the planet,” his brother replied eagerly, and then ended the pointless call himself.

“Waste of my time...” Xuvas muttered as he entered the interviewing room again.

The two privates at the table remained quiet and frozen in place as the obviously unamused Sith lord sat down across from them. He’d worked so hard to build up the suspense for them, basing his plan around revealing nothing about his true sentiments. The fact that they appeared both intimidated and confused, rather than just intimidated, angered him to no end. He had to finish preparing for missions off-world and simply leave as soon as he could.

Compensating to the very end, he tried to make up an excuse to give the pair one last shock and then get away from them. “The background checks I’d run on my own have cleared you both. You’re welcome with us as our new sensor operators.” They both sighed deeply in relief, but said nothing as he rose from his seat after having been in it only a matter of seconds. “Report to the spaceport in four days,” he added just as he left.

Making sure not to look back, he took his much-needed leave. His assignment to tasks outside of Dromund Kaas couldn’t come sooner.


	7. Simple Requests

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Sith Lord who just can’t get a break from interference by irresponsible family members.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows soon after the previous chapter.

Xuvas could easily get used to the Dromund Kaas Spaceport. Efficient, professional, and far enough away from the city such that nobody was there unless they had a reason to be. It was a monument to Imperial perfectionism.

But that’s not where he was. He didn't need anything at the main spaceport that day.

Instead, he was at a smaller, privately held aerospace service center which received more traffic than it could handle. There was less space, a large portion of the employees were new hires who didn’t know what they were doing, and one of the crew members he’d brought along with him hadn’t been ‘entered into the system’ by the Ministry of Travel, according to a service droid, and the group had been delayed for almost twenty minutes. By the time they’d been allowed onto the observation deck of the private hangar, the Sith Lord was already ranking the hangar staff in order of who he’d Force-drop into a garbage can first.

A young lady in a green uniform hurried over to the group in the waiting room outside the deck, flicking her fingers over an inconsistently responsive holographic day planner. “Lord Xuvas, you’ve arrived! So glad to see you, right this way!” she said nervously while waving him and his three companions to the observation deck.

“You’re late,” was all he said in reply, and she immediately started to avoid eye contact.

“My apologies, but I-“ She ducked to avoid hitting her head on a brand new billboard with the message ‘system setup ready’ flashing on it. “I just arrived for my shift and wasn’t informed...I just arrived, and I’m thrilled to show you the results of your requests!”

Unsympathetic due to the sizeable fees the service center charged, and impatient after the mass of paperwork required to authorize work on one ship of the Sphere by a private contractor, he applied a little more pressure. “We’ve lost twenty minutes; I expect to complete my business here on time regardless and without reductions in service quality.”

The young lady stopped at the edge of the observation deck and nearly stumbled when he continued walking into the hangar proper. “I, well, I’m sure we’ll have you...um...Lord Xuvas, this is a restricted area per our safety policy-“

He swung around to stare at her from behind his mask, nearly making her stumble again. The two new crew members he’d hired a few days prior even froze nervously, and Pjiega grinned almost eagerly.

“Your policy; not mine.”

She gulped after a moment and nodded, clinging to her holographic tablet like a security blanket. Once he felt certain that he’d made his displeasure at the delay apparent, he turned away from her to finish his inspection.

He walked among the welder droids and cargo carriers as he approached the area of the hangar he’d rented. “Show me my own property first,” he ordered while stepping over cables and what appeared to be an unopened container of overpriced spare parts.

The young lady’s eyes finally lit up as if it was her time to shine. “Absolutely, sir! Er, my lord! Er, Darth...right this way!”

In the corner he’d rented at the back of the hangar sat three ships. The larger one was the familiar interceptor he’d appropriated while on Korriban, but closer to his position were two smaller ships - a bomber and a gunship. A handful of people and service droids flanked the ships, moving aside when they saw the black-clad Sith approach.

His guide for the day waved two of the people over, a well-groomed Human man with show muscles and a Rattataki woman with a pleasant demeanor and a much smaller stature than Pjiega. “So first thing’s first, these are the two fighter pilots whose private employment we’ve facilitated for you. Oh, you two! This is Darth Xuvas of the Sphere of Philofosy,” she said, causing the pureblood to wince at her mispronunciation.”

“Graeth, my lord,” the Human said while saluting formally.

The small Rattataki woman kept shifting her gaze from the pureblood to the big Rattataki woman. “I’m Viroga, six years experience as a gunship pilot. I’m familiar with all weapon layouts.” When she continued to glance at Pjiega, the latter just stared her down as if trying to melt her with the heat of her irate expression.

“Super, this will be a great opportunity! So Graeth, this is Neria, she’ll handle all sensors and mission control systems in the bomber with you.”

“How do you do,” the Chiss woman said.

“Fine,” Graeth said brusquely.

“And Viroga, this is Kurtaden,” the young hangar attendant said while pointing to the portly sensor operator.

“Hello, Kurt. Pleased to meet you. Have you ever flied one of these before?”

“Uh...”

“Everybody go to the waiting area,” Xuvas ordered, causing even the two new pilots to snap to attention.

“Yes, right away, sir!” Viroga replied on their behalf, earning an eye-roll from Pjiega.

The young uniformed lady watched the others go and then eyed Pjiega uncomfortably for a moment when the latter didn’t leave. Once she realized that the Sith’s armored companion didn’t count among ‘everybody,’ she continued.

“Ooo...kay, let’s take a look at this. On the left here you can see your family’s M-7 Razorwire. We’ve armed it with seismic mines and a heavy laser cannon, just as you asked.”

“And the other?” Xuvas asked quite bluntly.

“Right! Right, of course,” she replied while dividing her gaze between the ship and her holograph records. “This is your family’s Mangler, complete with the ion cannon your requested. Your family’s ships are quite ready for your use since we received the consent forms from your siblings-“

“Their consent isn’t necessary.”

The young lady blurred out a few sounds which seemed similar to words, obviously taken aback by his comments. “Well, legal consent for family heirlooms is usually given...” A very slight turn of his head gave her pause, and she seemed to reconsider. “Your ships will be ready for space combat soon enough.”

“Install a hyperdrive on both.”

The woman blinked silently, the only soundtrack for her confusion being the work taking place on other ships in the spaceport. The equivalent of a computer blue screen was written all over her face, and she was only able to murmur a sound which rose in pitch at the end like a question.

“My interceptor is my only ship for intergalactic travel, so my two escort fighters will need to follow. Install a hyperdrive on both.”

Perhaps the request wasn’t s Common one, as the young lady began to flip through holographic work orders as if her visible discomfort would cause him to retract the request. When he continued staring at her, she relented. “Well, each one of them does have the empty slots for hyperdrive install...you know what, yes, and my supervisor will be glad to answer questions about the time frame.”

“He’d better be.”

“Hey, good idea! Let’s take a look inside your government-issued Fury over there! We’ve put a lot of work into redesigning the interior per your instructions, so if you’ll just come with me...”

The trio entered the interceptor, performing a slow walk around of the interior. Xuvas felt like he was shopping for an apartment given the way the guide mercifully stopped talking and simply showed him the changes the company had made. They’d at least followed his instructions to streamline the utilization of space aboard.

On their way out, he stopped by the exit and started to examine a closed door within the ship, on the other side of the centralized exit passage from the door to his personal quarters.

“Something is...awry,” he said suspiciously.

Without needing instructions, Pjiega opened the door while the young guide jump out of the way frightfully. Xuvas stepped inside, finding a mirror image of his captain’s quarters except with two beds instead of one.

“This was supposed to be a multi-purpose storage room,” he said, again suspiciously. The mistake was too glaring to have been an accident.

“Right, about that...well, your sister was here and brought the registration for the two other pureblood Sith in your crew. Apparently, per Imperial policy, they have the right to demand sleeping quarters separate from the non-Sith members of the crew-“

“That’s not true.”

“I...I’m sorry?”

“That’s a made up policy, it doesn’t exist.”

“But your sister said-“

“It doesn’t exist.”

“Are you sure, my lord?”

“You didn’t double check?”

The lady began avoiding eye contact again, and she brought up work orders bearing Siqsanjat’s thumbprint signatures. “She was very insistent that her friends get their own room, and that it was mandatory, and...that...you also changed your mind about the storage room.”

Unsure of just how to react and unable to really blame the unwitting attendant, Xuvas just stared at the quarters which he didn’t particularly want on his ship. Everything was supposed to be ready, save for the engine modifications on his personal ships, and there he was with his main ship - not legally his property - bearing unlicensed modifications from a private contractor. Were any of his peers to notice, he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to plausibly blame Siqsanjat for the alteration.

Gathering what must have been a great deal of courage on her part, the uniformed attendant cleared her throat. “Your sister claimed that you’d agreed to the modifications because she’d agreed to release all claims over the two starships,” she said softly.

“Of course she did.”

“She also said that you’d be happy.”

“Of course she did.”

“She also said that-“

“Okay,” Xuvas interjected, facepalming for a few moments as he admitted to himself that no scenario other than accepting the changes would be practical at that point.

Anxious tapping pattered on the floor as the young attendant fidgeted. “You mean...do you mean, everything is okay, or just some things?”

He pulled his hand away and sighed. “The job is fine. It’s too late to order adjustments now. Just have my starfighters outfitted fast enough.”

“Alright, good! Well, I’ll leave you too here,” the attendant said over her shoulder while fleeing from the ship. “Let me go put that order through!”

The two armored figures watched the young lady nearly trip over a cable on the hangar floor as she ran out of the ship, so eager was she to get away from them. The pair watched for a few moments longer; Xuvas was simply counting the days until he’d be off-world and as far away from Siqsanjat as possible.

Pjiega continued staring out of the exit ramp with him even as she spoke. “Do you...want me to kill your sister, master?” she asked with a sincere curiosity.

Xuvas actually had to consider the offer for a moment. It was tempting, but in his sister’s case, public embarrassment would probably be even more effective as revenge than just having her assassinated.

“No, there are other targets to eliminate first, so no. Not yet, anyway.”


	8. Survivors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natural selection is heartless, but also wise in its own uncompromising way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Occurs within the first two months of the story.

Silent fires raged in empty space, forming shining beacons in the darkness. Two sides crumbled simultaneously in the infinite expanse, leaving no sound due to the vacuum and no trace due to all communications having been wiped out on both sides. Fighters, shuttles, boarding ships, and the rest, all of them were blasted to pieces. With no oxygen to feed the flames, the explosions across engine blocks and fuel tanks merely formed a fireworks display that went unwitnessed saved by a few. The tragic misunderstanding went unregistered with both the Empire and the Mandalorians.

In one single remaining ship, the red warning lights still flashed; the hull breaches hadn’t allowed all atmosphere and simulated gravity to dissipate just yet. Bodies laid everywhere in both sides, leaving no winners...save for two.

Limping into the hangar bay, the two survivors among hundreds of casualties sat on crates for what they expected to be their last moments.

The less-injured of the two Imperial Troopers, a morose-looking Human whose armor had mostly been blasted off, tried his best to carry his more severely injured colleague to their final sitting spot on the ship. Although he’d been burned by an enemy flamethrower, he did his best to carry his compatriot’s weight. They both finally sat down, and he tried to pull together what he could from the depleted medpacs of the fallen.

For the only time that night and ever again, his eyes were downcast, if only slightly. “We tried,” he said with a forced calm as he inspected the piece of shrapnel which had pierced his ally’s armored waist.

A Chiss man whose teeth were stained as deep a shade of red as his eyes coughed up a bit more blood as the Human tried to clean his wound. “I know,” the blue-skinned man rasped, crestfallen.

“I put through seven distress signals...one of them seemed to make it though before the signal block was up again.” The Human patched up the Chiss the best he could and then rested, staring out through the hangar’s forcefield barrier into space. “How much time do you reckon we have left?”

Too exhausted for sarcasm, the Chiss glanced around at the damage. Mandalorian boarding ships were smoldering in the hangar, as were the walls and ceiling itself. The energy barrier flickered.

“An hour, maybe,” the Chiss panted. The bleeding in his abdomen had been stopped, but he was still in pain. “We’re on emergency oxygen...gravity simulator’s still up...fires haven’t hit the fuel tanks. But we’ll suffocate.”

The two of them sat wordlessly for a few minutes, watching the stars. Eventually even the emergency alarms shut down, as if the starship itself was giving up. An eerie silence settled in, emphasizing the barren nature of the empty space between star systems.

“All these years...I never stopped to watch,” the Chiss rasped.

The Human was confused at first, but slowly understood. “You mean the stars?”

“Yes...we’re around them so much. I guess I took it for granted. I...wish I’d slowed down a little more.”

The two of them became withdrawn as they felt the end approach. There was very little to say after such a needless loss of life.

“Me too,” the Human finally replied a while minute later.

Scrap metal and dead carbon units floated in space for a while, releasing the last bit of oxygen molecules into the vacuum a little while longer. A shining light blinked at them, catching their gazes as spots which weren’t there before appeared.

Three ships exited hyperspace right in front of the hangar.

The Chiss man’s red eyes lit up, his pain seemingly gone. “Holy shit,” he murmured without the nasty rasp anymore.

“Low oxygen can cause hallucinations,” the Human said in disbelief as the three obviously Imperial ships entered the hangar. They took their sweet time, too, granting the injured troopers a few moments to observe. “Wait, hallucinations aren’t shared. Do you see three starships landing right now?”

The Chiss hasn’t despaired quite as much, and was already grabbing on to more crates to lift himself to his feet. “The last signal got through!” he coughed excitedly.

The Human stared in awe for a few more seconds, but he leapt to his feet and helped his comrade approach the visiting starships when the hatches opened and real, actual people exited.

Two of the ships were fighters, and the crew members left casually to stretch their legs and inspect the bodies for survivors in vain. The larger interceptor, however, revealed a few more crew members, including a few who were obviously Sith. The injured troopers walked a little faster and bowed, the Chiss almost doubling over in the process.

Despite their obvious injuries, the apparent leader of the group took his time looking the two injured men over as they saluted.

At least the masked man didn’t mince words. “Your signal arrived; we have as well. How did this happen?”

Waiting for the other to speak, the two troopers both tried to compose themselves. The Chiss was ready first.

“This was a misunderstanding...I do not exaggerate, my lord. It was agreed that the Mandalorians would board after we both entered each other’s zone of safe distance...the fighting started among the smaller star fighters, and without order...”

“And all of those aboard began fighting as well?”

“Yes...the tension rose so fast, and nobody knew...what was going on. It all happened too fast.”

“And what did both of you do?”

This time, the Human answered. “We tried to send distress signals from the communications bridge, but they’d jammed our signals as we’d jammed theirs. Fighting reached the upper deck, so we went to meet the enemy. We tried to stop them, but what you see around you is what happened. A misunderstanding caused us all to lose; it was just a massive waste of life and material for no reason.”

The Sith shook his head. “On the contrary; there was a greater wisdom in this. The Force has chosen you both to survive.”

The Human was immediately incensed. “What wisdom was in this mess, my lord?!” he asked indignantly.

“Keep your voice down,” his comrade whispered.

“Our comrades - good people whose lives were intertwined with ours - are dead! They’re dead when they didn’t have to be, gone because of poor communication! Their families will be bereaved and our Empire will be that much more impoverished because of it!

“You tell me, my lord, what was the wisdom here?”

The hangar was silenced by the Human trooper’s anger, especially given the target of it. Old tensions boiled up again, and the visiting crew members nervously busied themselves with salvage work to avoid what they assumed would be one more dead body. Even the other trooper looked down, assured that the outburst would earn them both a court martial.

Yet no such calamity occurred. The Sith didn’t return the trooper’s anger, merely nodding in approval at the display. Speaking clearly and without reproach toward them, the juggernaut surprised the rest of the crew.

“Whatever was destined to happen could not have been prevented by all of the galaxy; and whatever wasn’t meant to be could not be brought about by the combined efforts of us all. If you ask yourself about what could have been, then you’ve discovered what is the true waste.

“What matters is our own reality. This incident has occurred; it could not have been stopped. The two of you fought for your survival; you could not have been stopped. The Force has chosen you to live on, and if you truly wish to bring solace to their memories, to their families, and to the Empire, then you must choose now what you can do.

“We will return you to the Empire’s nearest orbital station so you can be debriefed; we will have your testimony accepted. From there, we will offer you a coffer containing one-hundred thousand credits and a ticket to the Imperial Fleet. If you choose that, then you can likely return to wherever home is and receive honorable discharges to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

“If you choose to stay with us and avoid the Imperial Fleet until scrutiny over this incident recedes, then you’ll have your chance make a semblance of sense out of this incident. We will give you the opportunity to carry this experience with you, all the wiser for it, as you defend the Empire. We will give you the opportunity to mark the names of the fallen on any monument we erect after victories, for you’re the only ones who can ensure that they aren’t forgotten. We will give you the opportunity to show that the Force made you survivors for a reason.

“Or you can just take the money and go home. It’s up to you.”

The Human’s anger didn’t wane during the Sith’s monologue, and a few of the crew members looked on anxiously. The Chiss was downtrodden but less so after the speech, and he tried to stand tall even as he wheezed from the residual pain.

“I know my choice,” he said, peering sideways at his ornery comrade.

The Human’s anger made him forget his admittedly less severe injuries, and the conflict marked on his face was decidedly minor. He looked down, hesitant to concede.

“So do I,” he said.

Without pomp or dramatic pauses, the Sith juggernaut nodded and waved over another crew member. “You, get them on board and patched up. You, salvage what you can to see if we can re-equip them from what’s left. We leave in fifteen minutes.”

Once the two wounded soldiers had been ushered on board by the medical droid, the rest of the crew resumed their salvage operation at a rabid pace. Once of them, wearing a pilot’s uniform, joined the Sith as he observed the damage in the hangar.

“What a crime...this is a beautiful ship,” Orcina murmured, aware of the loss of life around her but more moved by the loss of an expensive vessel.

“Perhaps one day, we’ll earn a starship like this from the Sphere,” Xuvas replied. “I do hope that you choose to remain with us by then.”

“To the end, my lord.” They waited for a moment before Orcina spoke again. “How did you know those two would choose to join us?”

For the first time that trip, Xuvas actually did pause for a moment. “I didn’t. I sensed that they’re strong, but their strength could have also led them to return home and cope with their PTSD via therapy and introspection. What I did know is that if they passed the test of temptation, then they’d be the types we’d enjoy having with us.”

Orcina watched as her colleagues recovered a decent amount of material, if not further personnel. “If they survived this, then I suppose that they’ll survive almost anything. It seems we happened upon an excellent opportunity, my lord.”

The pair was interrupted by the bleeping of Xuvas’ astromech droid. Ever the recalcitrant robot, the astromech loudly announced the approach of their departure before driving back inside his ship, refusing to participate in any of the work. They’d need to leave in a few moments.

Xuvas walked back to the ramp of his interceptor, remaining outside until all crew members had boarded their ships but signaling that the time to leave had come. Orcina entered the ship before the others in order to take her seat at the controls.

“We’ll see,” he murmured as she passed him.


	9. First Conversion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first time in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mere weeks after the previous chapter.

Xuvas couldn’t remember feeling his heart rush so quickly as it was outside that fortified door. Surrounded by flames and explosions right in the middle of the Imperial assault on Farnel Outpost, though, he was nearly unaware of the conflict around him. It wasn’t the victory rush of watching the Empire’s troops successfully sack one of the Republic’s best-defended forts on Balmorra which set his adrenaline running, nor was it the knowledge that he’d helped negotiate for assistance from the colicoids. No. As satisfying as it was to watch the big bugs devour Republic troopers (and to unwittingly serve as great living shields in the process), there was another source of his natural adrenaline rush that morning.

Outside the door of the officer’s outpost, the true source of his joy was the fact that the inhabitants had locked themselves in.

Flanked by Pjiega and two Imperial troopers, the juggernaut could feel the apprehension radiating from within the outpost. He’d cornered members of the Republic Army as well as the Jedi Order, forcing them to back themselves in an inescapable corner all for the sake of avoiding a direct confrontation with him. With their main power source destroyed and their emergency supplies dwindling, he knew they couldn’t hold out for long. Especially when Pjiega’s troubled past proved invaluable regarding said fortified door. As the former slave pointed out, many construction tools could double as demolition tools.

Sparks flew as she broke open the security gate with an ionized bolt cutter, twinkling on the ground as she sliced off pieces of the hydraulic locks. Grim satisfaction marked her face as she finally turned back to him. “It’s done. The whole piece of junk is movable now.”

“Good work,” he replied as she and the two troopers stepped back.

With a single wave of his hand, he telekinetically blew the door open to the physically painful sound of metal striking metal in monumental proportions. The door apparently broke through a partition, knocked out the support beams for a catwalk near the outpost’s ceiling, and killed a few people. Red and white battlesuits scattered as the Republic troops fell into disarray, split between retrieving the mushy bodies of those crushed beneath the flying door and diving for cover with the knowledge that they were cornered and outclassed.

Xuvas turned his head sideways to address this three followers. “Stay behind me,” he warned as he entered the outpost without a second thought.

The cramped quarters were full of debris, though most of it had been pulverized to the point where the few remaining troopers had nowhere to hide. The first few blasts of their rifles failed to damage Xuvas’ armor, and his own troopers deftly shot the hands of their enemies, both disarming and warning them as they raised their hands in surrender. A crowd of native Balmorrans huddled in another corner, scared as all hell.

Xuvas held out his own empty hands in an attempt to clam them, maintaining a healthy distance. “People of Farnell, sons and daughters of Balmorra: hear my words,” he announced loudly. A few of the locals wailed, especially when Pjiega hog-tied the Republic troopers and threw their helmets against the wall, leading Xuvas to subtly wave his hand for her to stop.

Motioning for the troopers to secure the area and leave him with the locals, Xuvas waited for the cries of the Balmorrans to wane. When they settled down and stared at him frightfully, he raised his hands again.

“No harm will come to you today.”

“Don’t listen to him!” yelled a nervous voice from the crowd, and Xuvas bit back on his tongue to avoid revealing his irritation.

“Shh!”

“You’ll get us all killed!”

“Listen to me, for this may be the most important announcement of the year in Farnell Outpost.” He waited for the opposition to die down before continuing. “Yours is a truly blessed planet. Yours is a truly innovative people. Yours is a truly envied craft. And that envy for your industry has led the Republic to deceive you.”

“The Republic never invaded our planet!”

“Yeah, the Empire just wants our tech!”

“Shush! Stop it!”

“No, you stop it!”

The huddled Balmorran mass bickered internally for a few moments as Xuvas mentally probed the area. There were two more Force-sensitives hiding themselves, both attempting to conceal their presence to no avail. He continued to monitor them while the natives argued and then quieted down; he didn’t want to speak unless he was sure that he wouldn’t be interrupted by nervous chatter. This impression on the notables of Farnell Outpost couldn’t be jeaopardized.

When he had their attention again, he continued. “Yes, the Empire admires and respects the talent and innovation of this planet and its people. Balmorra is needed, for numerous reasons. For those reasons, all settlements which have gained Imperial citizenship are eligible for complete reconstruction of healthcare and infrastructure. Not as a naïve act of charity - you, of all people, know that charity doesn’t exist.”

“Damn straight,” murmured an older gentleman.

“The villain speaks the truth.”

“Don’t listen to him!”

“Yes, this is the harsh truth: those who are needed will be loved more than those who need. Such is the nature of sentients. Ideals such as charity, freedom, and loyalty don’t truly exist; had they, then the Republic wouldn’t have abandoned such a hardworking and studious people as yourselves.”

A few members of the huddled VIPs shook their heads, but Xuvas noticed that more and more of them were making eye contact with him. They were tired of running and simply wanted a means to escape. They were receptive to believing him.

“The galaxy has forgotten us.”

“It hasn’t forgotten our inventions.”

“We let the Republic trick us.”

“No!”

“Yes, we were duped.”

Murmurs broke out as one of the locals began to push forward. An overweight civilian with the clothing and haircut of a noble stepped away from the crowd, leaving them shocked as he approached the masked pureblood. Scare but hopeful, the well-dressed man hesitated while staring up at their supposed savior.

“We fought the Empire fervently...can you guarantee that our town and its facilities will be rebuilt?” the pudgy man asked with big, child-like eyes.

An older Mirialan woman tried to grab the guy by the sleeve. “Brel! Stop!” she whispered. The hood drawn over her face gave away more than she’d realized.

Xuvas narrowed his eyes behind his metal mask, peering into her soul when it came to him. She was one of the two Force-sensitives he’d felt, hiding in plainclothes among the civilians. She’d just given him the greatest boon he’d received all day.

For sure, the Mirialan knew that he’d noticed her; her presence in the Force was cold and solid, an emotionless black hole like all senior Jedi, and she could obviously tell when another Force-sensitive was focusing on her. She was powerful, more so than Xuvas, and he wouldn't be able to influence her...directly. But he could influence the Balmorrans.

Withdrawing himself from the Force in pulsating bursts, he allowed his presence to wane whenever he spoke. “I will lay my career on the line for the sake of your town’s reconstruction,” Xuvas said to the overweight man with a hand over his heart. “But I doubt it will come to that; the Empire values those who work and pull their own weight, unlike the favoritism and inequality you’ll find in the Republic.”

Right when he mentioned the Republic, Xuvas inserted himself into the Force again, subtly at first. He assaulted the minds of the locals with fear and paranoia when he said that word, pushing them so lightly toward a panic that they’d think their emotions were natural. Immediately thereafter, the Mirialan began to massage their minds with the Jedi’s lying peace, clearly having caught on to his game. Little did she know that she was playing into his hands: the swinging pendulum of passion left the locals imbalanced and nervous regardless, and thus more open to the power of suggestion.

“I know full well that your planet paid heavier taxes than others due to your industrial output; this is the nepotism rife within Republic space,” he continued, giving them a harder mental shove this time. “Unproductive worlds leeched off of your honest work, all under the politically correct guise of fairness. Such as hominem attacks and stigmatization are par the course for any planet suffering from the cold-hearted control of the Jedi.”

Individuals among the Balmorrans huddled even more tightly in the corner this time, distancing themselves from the hooded Mirialan. Surely she realized that the locals were the target of his persuasion, not her and her companion, yet she still continued to send waves of calm into their minds in tandem with the wavelength along which Xuvas telepathically terrorized them. They began to fidget within seconds, openly speaking amongst themselves in a disorganized mess.

“The Republic used us and left.”

“We gave so much and never got back.”

“This is madness!”

“Resisting the Empire is madness...at least they value achievement.”

“I’m just tired of fighting!”

Unable to calm the group when they’d become so jumpy, the Mirialan finally looked directly at the pureblood. The Balmorrans backed away from her more obviously, leaving the two hooded figures to stare each other down. Xuvas has upset her, more than he could have if had he simply tried to assault her psyche directly.

Her presence in the Force heated up, betraying a concealed passion which was erased from her outward demeanor. “The Jedi brought peace to this world once; they can do it again-“

“Balmorra has had enough of your mind tricks, Andria,” Xuvas said. He’d simply learned her name from a basic intelligence file from an Imperial agent on the planet, but the locals didn’t know that. They gasped in awe as if he’d somehow caught her in a huge scandal via mysterious methods.

Xuvas remained silent thereafter, milking the power of understatement and brevity as much as he could. As if to add to the inane nature of the exchange, the pudgy noble named Brel stated the obvious. “She’s a Jedi trainer!” he exclaimed to a mixed reaction from his compatriots while pointing at the woman in white. “She just brings more and more people here to continue the war without fixing our situation!”

“Brel, that’s quite enough,” Andria the Mirialan Jedi said softly, though the momentary focus on the upstart broke her concentration, and Xuvas began to assault the minds of the Balmorrans with a flood of doubt and fright.

“Let him speak! Um...please?”

“Brel knows how we feel.”

“Friends, don’t let yourselves split apart now!”

“The Jedi are splitting us apart.”

“Now, that simply isn’t true,” Andria said to the crowd of increasingly dissenting locals.

As the Mirialan bickered with the scared natives, Xuvas stood back silently but intently. The second Force-sensitive there lacked Andria’s power, but was far more aggressive. Xuvas could feel the pushback every step of the way, except now the unseen foe was attempting to assault him directly. The presence was a little too assertive...even with Andria in front of him with her noticeable power, Xuvas could also feel the second individual hiding elsewhere in the outpost. The person was clearly stalking him, itching for a fight in order to slay a representative of the Empire publicly. That person didn’t realize they’d already lost.

Giving a hand signal for Pjiega to stand at ease, Xuvas waited out the argument in front of him as he felt the other Jedi finally approach behind him. The hidden foe must have been concealed in an air vent, or perhaps a storage closet, because their physical presence was contained entirely inside of the small outpost. They either believed that Xuvas truly hadn’t noticed, or that they’d be powerful enough to strike him down in a single blow. He allowed them to continue thinking that.

Meanwhile, Andria was becoming visibly flustered by the resistant nature of the former Balmorran resistance. Xuvas fed on the discord as he watched, observing a calm Jedi trainer experience a minor meltdown once she’d been backed into a corner.

“Look. Just listen to me. You ask good questions, but there are answers,” Andria said with an urgent tone after a few moments of nervous criticism from the Balmorrans. “Trust me.”

“Our families are dying! Our town is on fire!” Brel replied, almost (but not quite) with a hint of bravery in his tone. “This is what trusting you earned us!”

“Yeah!”

“Sad but true.”

“The boy is right.”

Andria shook her head. “The Empire caused all of this. Can you not see?”

“I can see...a...town on fire,” Brel replied hesitantly, inarticulately stumbling over the words. Those word had an effect on his comrades regardless.

At that point, Xuvas wasn’t even nudging the locals anymore; they’d completely snowballed into their own honest despair. He was, however, frustrated by the hidden Jedi’s own hesitation, as the person was simply hovering behind him. Determined to publicly reveal the Jedi as frauds, Xuvas escalated the situation.

“Ma’am, I believe the good people of this town have heard enough,” Xuvas said, turning up the bass in his voice as he reached for the Mirialan as if to usher her away. “Let’s end their suffering. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to come with me to the local Colonel-“

Andria stared right through Xuvas with wide, frightful eyes that betrayed an emotion her order typically opposed. Even the Balmorrans jumped away, and Xuvas could feel his hidden foe racing toward him. “Shian, don’t!” Andria cried.

The shadow of the Jedi knight swept over them both, and Xuvas braced himself for the collision. The knight named Shian leapt and landed behind him, bringing a lightsaber down on the neckguard of Xuvas’ armor in an attempt to decapitate him. His gear had cost him a healthy portion of his life savings and fortunately proved to be worth the cost; the well-tuned lightsaber sizzled on the metal surface and caused an inordinate amount of smoke, but failed to cause significant damage or even heat up the surface; the Sith’s shoulder and neck still felt as cool as usual in the local autumn weather.

The locals didn’t need to know how ineffective the attack was, however.

“Ow, you got me!” Xuvas groaned. The line was over the top, but the violent sight was so frightening that the locals were unlikely to notice.

Dropping to one knee with a hard thud, Xuvas allowed himself to fall forward, strategically grabbing the Jedi’s cloak in the process. Pulled to the ground alongside the target, the Jedi known as Shian gripped his lightsaber even more tightly in a split second reaction, struggling to both retain his weapon as well as avoid having his cloak and hood constrict his head and neck. The Jedi leaned in without thinking, grounding himself when Xuvas wouldn’t let go and causing the lightsaber to ineffectively sizzle against the high-grade armor.

Balmorrans screamed and ducked down, terrified by the sudden violence so close to them, unaware that Xuvas had pulled the attacker down with him. The split second when the Human Jedi knight tried to pull his cloak out of the pureblood’s hands was enough for the silent Rattataki to act.

The hum of the Jedi’s lightsaber stopped as the weapon fell to the ground, leaving only the human’s gurgling cries when Pjiega impaled him right through his armor with her vibro-axe. His corpse fell to the ground swiftly and without struggle, allowing the Balmorrans respite as their whimpers died down once more upon seeing the instigator of the fight dead.

Selling the non-injury as best he could, Xuvas breathed heavily and remained on the ground, surreptitiously removing the psychic fear effect he’d been buffeting the minds of the locals with. They calmed down, and the connection between the death of the Jedi knight and their fear receding became apparent to them quickly.

While Pjiega dragged the corpse away and called for the two Imperial troopers to return, a few of the locals approached the kneeling Sith warrior. “Sir, are you...” the one named Brel said before pausing. “Hey, give him some help!”

Despite the surprised expression made by the surviving Jedi trainer, a few locals helped Xuvas to his feet. He was a large man, and his gear was a hefty load, but the Balmorrans seemed to think that their difficulty in helping him stand was due to being hurt.

“I sense no injury in him,” Andria said while squinting in his direction acrimoniously.

Pjiega took the load off of the locals, throwing Xuvas’ arm over her shoulder to pretend to carry him as well as to free them up and allow the rejection to be solely their doing. Brel approached Andria unafraid, just as the others did, and Xuvas grinned behind his mask when he saw how angry she’d become.

“We’ve heard enough out of...out of...you!” Brel said, as inarticulate yet passionate as ever.

“Yeah!”

“Listen...won’t you listen to me?” The local Balmorrans began to leave their corner, walking past Xuvas and toward the exit unafraid, even of Pjiega. “You’ve all been manipulated - this is part of the invasion.”

“Let’s go,” mumbled one of the Farnell elders.

“This was all an act!” Andria protested, finally raising her voice. Without even challenging her through the Force, Xuvas had gotten to her.

Brel’s eyes widened, and he even started to show a bit of backbone. “An ac...an act? Are you mad? Your friend almost cut his head off!”

“His name was...” Andria moved toward the bound and gagged Republic troopers, though the way the Balmorrans flinched caused her to stop. She was powerful, more so than Shian, but she knew when she’d lost a battle and restrained herself. “His name was Shian, Brel. Shian. You know that. You know him. He’s been a friend to you all.”

“Ma’am.”

Andria looked up to see the two Imperials waiting. One had a blaster aimed at her, the other held his hand out. “In the name of the Emperor, I’m placing you under arrest on suspicion of crimes against the people of this town.” He continued holding his hand out shaking it at her when she tried to stare him down.

Several more fully geared troopers arrived on schedule, as Xuvas had ordered. They’d been positioned outside with blankets and first aid, laying in wait to make a good impression as saviors rather than conquerors. Andria watched as the people of Farnell Outpost abandoned her, leaving only the two troopers as her companions. Bereft of support and painted as the villain, she hung her head low and rose to be handcuffed after whispering to Shian’s corpse one last time. Not leaving her the dignity of an anonymous exit, the troopers removed her hood and firmly held her by the arms as they led her out to the other prisoners of war in plain view of those locals who hadn’t evacuated the town.

A shuttle with a medical icon painted on it landed outside, waiting for the limping Sith Lord. Brel Orus was waiting outside near an older couple who appeared to be of some distinction, giving a written statement to an Imperial field officer. The pureblood stopped near the group, all of whom turned to receive him.

“Honorable lieutenant, please have these three escorted to the area commander when possible. These are the heralds of the true people of Balmorra, the new Balmorra, and they’ll need to be debriefed on reconstruction.”

“Yes, my lord,” the lieutenant replied with a bow.

Clearly flattered by the sudden authority, even if unaware of what it entailed, Brel’s eyes lit up. “Yes, my lord!” he and the two others repeated.

Nodding silently, Xuvas continued to limp with assistance into the miniature shuttle, playing up the role of the injured protector as the locals - both prisoners of war and Imperial collaborators - looked on in awe. Pjiega set him down on the seat on one side of the cramped mini-transport and sat across from him. Once the hatch had closed and they’d taken off, he relaxed and breathed normally again.

For the first time in weeks, Pjiega actually laughed, and Xuvas did too when he fully realized how well his plan had worked.

“I almost thought we wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I knew I could push both of those Jedi, but I didn’t know if they’d attack with sabres or not, if they’d attack from the front or the back, if they’d both attack or if only one...”

“But one trying to backstab you was more realistic. People resort to anything when cornered,” the Rattataki replied.

“I suppose so...it wasn’t likely to happen any other way.” He paused and looked at the aftermath of the invasion outside, feeling an upswelling of pride in his chest. “You’ve seen me cleanse Revanites before, but I’ve never converted an actual non-citizen to the Empire before. It feels good. Literally a whole room of them joined, and more will after them.” He paused and looked across to her. “Have you killed a Jedi before?”

For a moment, Pjiega gave it some thought until her face became slightly less hardened. “Shit, I don’t think I have. We’ve killed a lot of regular Republic scum, but that guy was the first...shit, I didn’t savor it enough. I just impaled a Jedi.”

“Maybe it just comes naturally to you, so it doesn’t feel...feel different, you know. Like it’s your natural place in the order of all things, and you simply didn’t have the chance to fulfill it till now.”

She licked the blood on her axe, oblivious to his combination of cringing and laughing. “Yep, it tastes normal. I guess this is just what I’m meant to do.”

He laughed again, though she didn’t appear to know why he found her comment funny. He shook his head. “Forget about it. Anyway. This is just the start...we’ll kill many more as we take this planet. We have the locals on our side; the snowball has started to roll.


	10. Beyond Balmorra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An up-and-coming Sith warrior ends a successful campaign with an unwanted series of formalities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to end the story here. It was really an exercise in writing certain genres and scenes, and given that it was a collection of one-shots rather then a consistent narrative, it felt time to lay this one to rest.

“Rise, Darth Xuvas.”

The typically clear, harmonious voice of Darth Lachris bore a slight echo effect when she spoke across the length of the gallery she’d turned into a meeting room at the new Sobrik Citadel. Though many higher ranking Sith shared her power and determination, not all could match her ability to make such strong impressions. The dark, narrow meeting room bore a design that obligated the half a dozen military officials to sit closely together yet still allowed sound to reverberate strongly, adding to the statement she made by projecting her voice everywhere without any visible effort.

He had to admit that he was impressed now that he’d finally met Balmorra’s new governor. He rose slowly, not wanting to spoil the mood she’d set for the new field commanders under her authority.

Out of respect, he remained standing even when she took a seat at the head of the table with the six military personnel. Those field commanders watched him through aged eyes, a few of them reluctantly accepting their junior as a savior while others seemed goal-oriented enough not to bother themselves with the Sith warrior’s lack of experience. A few years prior, he’d have been far too shy to stand before such illustrious figures, but considering the hard few months he’d fought and the achievements he’d wrought, he felt that standing quietly and answering questions was a fairly earned form of recognition.

Darth Lachris went through the motions in spite of knowing the answers to all inquiries well before the debriefing. Eschewing holomessages, she began the ritual of verbal confirmation.

“In light of the swift results we’ve heard of, I’ll forego formalities to the best of my ability and focus on the bottom-line we’ve reached here. For the benefit of all of Balmorra’s new administrators, let’s approach this performance review in terms of objectives.”

“As you command, Lord Lachris,” he replied.

“Describe Outpost Victory for our governing council.”

Xuvas’ heart beat a bit more rapidly for a few seconds given that he’d most certainly be judged on his diction. Every word he’d say had to be calculated. After a few moments, the nervousness was gone - at least temporarily. He tried to speak freely and hoped he could simply not think about it.

“It’s a proud Imperial town in a period of growth. An increasing number of civilians are leaving their mountain bunkers and valley settlements to take advantage of the land grants we’ve publicized; Balmorran industriousness is firmly in the Empire’s grasp.”

“Would you say that the land grant program for settlers has disproven critics of feasibility?”

He smirked beneath his mask. Although he didn’t know her that well, he knew a leading question when he heard one. She seemed to be on his side.

“Resoundingly; public ownership of the wastelands around the fortified area would have resulted in waste. The Balmorrans emigrating there clean up the area themselves and promote the safe image to those yet to accept the dark side.” He paused for effect, and she thankfully allowed him to do so. “Also, the Museum of Republic Exploitation of Balmorra which we established at the Outpost brings visitors who then spread the word.”

“And how was Outpost Victory taken with so few losses?”

“Through the prison once used by Republic agitators to detain citizens. A few of the guards understood the error of their ways, but needed a measure of persuasion. I must give credit where credit is due; an agent from Imperial Intelligence came up with the idea. ‘Cipher Nine’ was the code name, I believe; I never got a good look at them, but they arranged the meetings with the sympathetic prison guards. Cipher Nine arranged a series of secret meetings during which I converted a quarter of the prison staff to the dark side. They and the citizens whom they freed were essential in the overthrow of the Republic occupiers of the town.”

A few of the Imperial commanders nodded across the table to each other, though none of them interrupted - likely due to the governor’s reputed intolerance for disorder. Even Xuvas waited through her manufactured dramatic silence, not daring to ask her questions in public.

Darth Lachris didn’t cross the line into showboating, but she did pause again, long enough to give the false impression that she was actually thinking deeply about information she’d already known for quite some time.

“And what became of Outpost Traken-4?” she asked more pointedly. One of the commanders, an older fellow likely approaching the rank of Moff, leaned forward intently; Xuvas could feel the scrutiny of his results intensifying.

This issue would require a measure of spin. “Traken-4 was, as I discovered, a death trap not designed for sentient habitation. It’s sundering is a gain for the Empire, not a loss.”

“How so?” the older commander asked. “We’ve appropriated Republic and Rebel material elsewhere and found such operations quite profitable.”

“Profit is the operative word there,” Xuvas replied. The tension in his voice was hidden since it had only just begun to make itself felt, and he tried not to think about it.

“How so?” the field commander asked again.

Xuvas took a few seconds to breathe. The commander was twice his age and had obviously seen much more conflict. He couldn’t satisfy the man solely based on presenting evidence - he recognized his own level. He’d have to rely on the fact that only he’d been at Traken-4 personally.

“As I said, that outpost was a death trap. It had experienced a number of environmental crises due to Republic mismanagement of waste facilities as well as rebel neglect. The condition of most of the occupiers was so poor that our own troops were at risk were they to engage in direct combat. Instead, we elected to make a point about what happens when the order and organization of the Empire is willfully rejected.

“We blockaded Outpost Traken-4 and waited. Without the benefits of trade in chemical treatment equipment from hardworking Imperial cities, the Rebels and Republic collaborators succumbed to the toxicity of the environment they’d created. A number of them attempted to defect when we also bombarded all communications in the outpost with Imperial promotional transmissions all hours of the day and night, but by that time the Republic agitators within had rigged explosives to destroy their outpost and avoid further embarrassment.”

I also ordered eight hours of nonstop bombardment, he thought to himself, though he withheld that specific detail.

For a few seconds the commander gave Xuvas a hard look, making the other military officials visibly uncomfortable at the sight of a non-Force sensitive subtly challenging a Sith. When that Sith didn’t react, however, the probable Moff respectfully backed down and simply nodded.

Darth Lachris kept her own emotions hidden from Xuvas, but at least in public, she gave off an air of dignified satisfaction. “Was the conversion of the settlement known as Ghost Town connected to the fall of Outpost Traken-4?” she asked.

“No, actually; there was no relation. This is exemplary of the success of our multi-faceted approach. Using a pen name, I wrote a series of articles exposing the inequality between Balmorran agricultural operations and Republic covert military operations, the latter of whom were appropriating provisions below market value. When the connection to the economic problems here became apparent, the natives engaged in what ancient history texts refer to as a ‘peasant rebellion,’ except against the Rebels and their Republic allies.”

As animated as a group full of uptight military officials could be, the half a dozen uniformed commanders nodded politely and remained quiet, giving Xuvas hope that he’d be able to leave. While he reveled in being on the front lines alongside the troops he led, he detested the large amounts of time spent on meetings as per government standards and practices. The sooner they let him move on to another conquest, the better.

Visibly sated, Lachris watched her commanders as if waiting to see if there were further comments. When no one spoke, she gave Xuvas a very self-gratified look. Her gaze almost felt hollow to him, as if she was really just happy to have her planet pacified and didn’t entirely care about him personally. That suited him just fine.

“Well, it seems that your efforts have made our job of actually governing quite a bit easier; I do suppose that a show of gratitude is in order before your assignment on this planet ends. There’s currently a celebration planned to coincide with the renewed riots on Coruscant - good job on broadcasting that live confession by Cheketta, by the way - and your staff members could take the opportunity for recognition.”

Xuvas smiled behind his mask. Whether she was merely extending a ritual offer or not, he couldn’t guess, nor would he try. What he would try was using the offer as an opportunity to make a point.

“You honor me with your consideration, and I most certainly owe you my thanks,” Xuvas replied. “But the head of my Sphere back on Dromund Kaas has already scheduled further assignments for me.”

When Lachris smiled curiously, he could tell that she indeed cared more about competing her own tasks than actually showing appreciation for his work. Still, he couldn’t feel offended - just as she was eager to begin actually ruling, he was eager to move on. “You mean that you’re comfortable leaving without award? Even after the work you’ve put in?” she asked.

“I do, Darth Lachris; as long as we’re assured that the mission of liberating Balmorra has been accomplished, I can take my leave.”

“I must say, this wasn’t expected.”

“Perhaps...but norms and standards of behavior aren’t my concern. I did nothing here on this planet for the goal of fame or reward; all my effort, all my labor, all injuries incurred, have been for the sake of this,” Xuvas said while motioning toward one of the red Imperial banners lining the walls.

The military commanders remained absolutely still, and the one who’d scrutinized the Sith warrior previously appeared rather surprised. “This,” Lachris replied while motioning toward the same banner, “rewards those who defend it.”

“My defense of the Empire and its territory is sufficient reward; I’d much rather leave the public recognition and monetary awards for the rank and file. It is they who need that inspiration, that knowledge that their work has been recognized.

“As for me, I’m fine attending my targeted assignments and seeking swift exit thereafter. I’m fine.”

The room remained quiet for a few moments after he finished speaking, empty even of whispers. Though the field commanders looked up him respectfully, he suspected that Lachris viewed him as little more than a tool. As much as he did believe in what he’d said, he also wished to leave the service of one who viewed him as a pawn rather than a bishop.

Inhaling deeply as if aiming for effect, Lachris pressed her fingerprints into the holopanel floating over her end of the table. The doors behind Xuvas opened, and he could hear the sound of Imperial troopers standing at attention.

“Your humility honors us all,” Lachris said with a nod. “I’ll be sure to inform Darth Aruk is your success here; you’ve proven to be a great asset to our cause.”

His dismissal was unspoken, and he bowed respectfully to the governor before taking his leave. Outside the chambers, he walked alone through the citadel, speaking to none as he made his way back to where he’d left his personal crew members. After a resoundingly successful campaign so early in his career, he was surprised at how...normal it felt.

Maybe Lachris was insincere in her well wishes and only viewed him as a tool she no longer needed. Probably. More than likely. But Xuvas also knew that she wasn’t alone - the Empire was, unfortunately, rife with the unfaithful and exploiters who didn’t truly fathom what it meant to defend that banner.

None of that mattered. He’d continue from Balmorra; he knew he would. If he had anything to do with it, then the galaxy would eventually know of the glory of the Sith Empire...whether by sound philosophical argument, or brute pacification.


End file.
